


New Dawn Fades

by Ziracona



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, But you don't have to have read it to understand any of this just I am keeping my core world system, Canon AU to ILM (Philip reset before interacting a second time with the gang/not reached), Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, I just really enjoy this ship & I wanted to write it more, I'll add when I do, M/M, Probably the other survivors too at some point if all the killers are there but god y'all, Trauma, character development stuff, heavy cursing, that's 23 people oof we will see
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:06:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 96,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26310850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziracona/pseuds/Ziracona
Summary: When a mishap during a routine day in the realm leaves Quentin injured and separated from the other survivors, he ends up trapped in Ormond in bad shape, and Joey finds him.A simple choice snowballs slowly into a situation demanding a heavy price, and leaves them trying to outrun something that can't be stopped or escaped. Or can it?
Relationships: Joey (Dead by Daylight)/Quentin Smith
Comments: 112
Kudos: 216





	1. Death Throes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dylan Speck & Tyler](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Dylan+Speck+%26+Tyler).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A simple accident leaves Quentin and Dwight in bad shape, and Quentin stranded in the middle of Killer territory.

“There’s been a lot recently, hasn’t there?” asked Quentin.

“Of new killers?” checked Dwight, turning and glancing back at him for a second. Quentin looked distracted. He was eyeing the terrain with curiosity, but he turned to Dwight at the sound of his voice and nodded.

“It…seems like it used to be longer…Didn’t it?” checked Quentin, speeding up for a second to be at his side again, “Like. I don’t know. I mean, I know I can’t _really_ tell time here at all, but it used to feellike a year—or—I don’t know, maybe not a year, but half a year? A few months? It felt like longer, back when I was new.”

“Yeah. I don’t think it’s just you getting adjusted,” agreed Dwight, holding a branch back for Quentin as they passed through a dense chunk of the woods, “I think you’re right. The Entity’s been…escalating. Which, unfortunately probably means it’s been-“

“-Getting stronger,” finished Quentin with him, looking as not thrilled about that as he felt.

“Yeah,” said Dwight. There wasn’t much else _to_ say to that.

“So…what’s the end goal with it, do you think?” asked Quentin, pushing through a tangled copse of saplings in their way and having some trouble.

 _We should really just go around, but at this point, I’m too tired to do that too…_ Dwight forged after, fighting with the underbrush with as little tact as Quentin was. At least there was no one to see them getting their asses handed to them by shrubbery. _God I’m tired,_ thought Dwight. They’d been walking around casing the area for hours now. It was a nice thing to do—useful, trying to monitor the changes in the woods ever since they’d figured out the areas shifted all the time, but it took _forever_ recently. Now that they had, like Quentin had mention, so much more _shit._ More killers, more area, more ground to cover. More change. He was also pretty damn sure at this point that the Entity was also making the forest denser than it used to be, and a part of Dwight wondered if that was being done explicitly to deter them from doing exactly what they were doing now—to—to encourage them to stay close to home, to the campfire. Keep inside the safety of their cage. _Well, now I just want to explore more, so I guess thanks for the motivation, you shitty spider god,_ thought Dwight, glancing up at the dark sky overhead. Weird that as long as he’d been living in the dim twilight of the realm, he thought of this kind of time as day. His idea of night and day really had nothing to do with the state of the sky at all anymore.

“I mean,” continued Quentin up ahead, finally breaking through into a more open section of the woods again and waiting for him, turning back and trying to help him through the last patch of tangled under brush, “Do you…think that if—like, does it want to kidnap _everyone_? The whole world? I don’t think it’s got the room to fit us all. A-and I know that like—what are there, like almost fifty of us now? However many, that that’s not even close to the population of a town, let alone a city or a country or the whole world or something, so I-I know it’s going wild with the assumptions to say something like that, but—”

“No, I get you,” agreed Dwight, brushing leaf and twig fragments off himself, “I don’t know either, but it _is_ worrying. I _definitely_ don’t think it could hold a couple _billion_ people in here though, so world domination can’t be on the table, but that said, I don’t know what it _does_ want. Other than to feed on us.”

Quentin nodded thoughtfully, and idly fiddled with his necklace for a second. “Maybe it’s just stockpiling,” he offered, “It’s probably had lean times before. I guess it’d make sense for any kind of creature that feeds to pile up food when it can, to be ready for a time it _can’t._ ”

That made sense, and honestly, that would be like, a best-case scenario for them. “I hope you’re right,” said Dwight, giving him a tired smile, “That’s way less intimidating than the stuff _I’ve_ been considering.”

“Yeah?” asked Quentin, moving to keep pace as they started off again, “What do you think?”

“I think it’s greedy,” said Dwight, glancing over at him, “Or. Gluttonous. Both. Not sure which applies here, if we’re food. Whichever. I think probably it’s just gotten more powerful slowly, and now that it’s got more strength, it just wants more and more to snack on, so it’s been taking more and more people. Getting bolder. And it’ll keep doing that as much as it can.”

“Maybe it’ll do something stupid, then,” said Quentin hopefully, “Push itself too far. Even as powerful as this thing obvious is, there has to be a limit to what it can contain.”

“Yeah,” said Dwight, starting to grin a little conspiratorially, “I’ve kind of been hoping that too.”

“Oh!” Quentin hissed the warning in a whisper and shot out a hand, stopping him. Dwight paused and looked the direction he was looking and could just barely make out a change in light up ahead. _Deathslinger._

 _“You see it?”_ mouthed Quentin.

Dwight nodded and took out the little notebook they’d been keeping track of nearby realms in and marked it on his poor attempt at map. Deathslinger was new. They’d only had him in the realms for maybe a month now—no, probably not even quite that. And he was especially dangerous, because like the Huntress, he could hit you from a distance.

 _“What now?”_ mouthed Quentin after a second, looking from him to the book questioningly.

“Let’s circle it carefully,” whispered Dwight, “If we go all the way back into the woods, we might miss the next area.”

Quentin nodded, and much slower than before and keeping low now too, the two of them kept going, edging along the border to the Deathslinger’s land. The border was clear, so it was easy to see where the line of danger was drawn. The area was lower than the forest, with a small embankment dropping down to his territory and marking where forest ended and prairie started, the yellowed grass springing up at the base of it a clear and stark contrast to the cold, dim green woods around them. It was so hard not to be fascinated though, as they went, by the town laid out before them. A frozen snapshot of the old American west. A ghost town, in maybe the truest sense of the phrase Dwight had ever seen: an old saloon, a stagecoach, rickety wood buildings along the sides of a dusty old street, leading to a grim gallows at the end of it, nooses still up and swinging idly in the wind, and nothing but rotting corpses and the knowledge that somewhere, out of sight but not out of mind, would be the single living inhabitant of that ghost town, if you could call him living. Dangerous and deadly no matter what the truth of that questions was. But as fascinating as the ghost town was, or even the Deathslinger himself, that wasn’t why it was hard not to stare at it. It was because the Deathslinger, for some unknown reason Dwight would never understand but couldn’t have been more thankful for, had been gifted the _sun_.

It didn’t even matter that the ball of fire in the sky wasn’t real. God, it had been _so, so long_ since he’d seen even a mockery of it. The sight of it again had almost killed him with heartbreak and nostalgia and desperation. The first time Dwight had had a trial with the Deathslinger, back the day he’d appeared, he’d been taken completely unawares and would have been shot through the back in the first twenty seconds of that trial if Claudette hadn’t been there to knock him over, because he’d just been staring at the sky. Lost in the wonder of seeing even the Entity’s too large, false reproduction of the burning orb he hadn’t seen for real in years. It was always sunset in the Deathslinger’s land, but that was still sun, and God. He had missed it. He had missed the light of day _so_ much he didn’t even have words for it. For the feeling of seeing it again, even if it was just a cheap Hollywood painting set up against the backboards, a fake sunset, not a real sun at all. Still. _Still,_ thought Dwight, emotion choking him up in his throat at the sight of it. He loved and hated ending up here in trials, because it always threw him off. And yet. And yet…

 _The sun…God. How can I miss you so much,_ thought Dwight painfully, creeping towards the far end of the Deathslinger’s area, maybe two thirds of the way to its edge now, _You’re just a star. But I would cut off my right hand to be able to see you again for real and just…just actually feel true, real, honest to god sunlight on my skin again._ How could a thing like that matter so much?

Forcing himself to refocus on the reality past the ache in his chest, Dwight kept moving, sliding along the edge of the Deathslinger’s place. They were up high, on the edge of the little maybe six foot slope leading down to the lowered area the Deathslinger was in. Which was weird, now that he’d moved on from the sun and was thinking about it—usually the borders were even, and you just had to depend on the change in plant like to know where the border was. But then, what _wasn’t_ weird about the Deathslinger’s home turf? There was no sign of the man, though, and that was good. Honestly, they couldn’t be in too much danger, because the killers couldn’t get out—they probably could have stood up here and yelled at the guy and gotten nothing worse than some extra aggression next trial—but hey, it paid to be careful and it cost nothing. And the dude had a ranged weapon. No one had ever like, taken a pot-shot from a Huntress hatchet while chilling out in the woods, so they had no reason to think that _could_ happen, but uh. At the same time they had no _definite_ proof that they couldn’t, and uh, better sorry than really fucking dead, you know?

“I wonder if the birds are edible,” mumbled Quentin under his breath.

Dwight snapped out of his own convoluted line of thought and turned to give him a disbelieving look. “Quentin,” he hissed back, “You don’t want to eat a _buzzard_. I’m not kidding. Even if those were real birds, you _know_ what they eat, and there’s only one type of carrion here, and I’ll give you a hint: it’s a large bipedal mammal.”

“Okay, okay,” agreed Quentin sheepishly, “I’m just curious.”

Dwight exhaled what was almost a laugh and turned back to the path ahead of him, and the dirt ledge beneath his foot gave out.

He screamed—only for a maybe a half a second before he’d choked it back as he realized how fucking bad an idea screaming was, and he heard something between a gasp and a cry from Quentin and saw his hand reach out for him as he went plummeting backwards, and then his head hit the ground, and he rolled, fast and hard against unforgiving, dry ground as solid as a rock, and then as quickly as it had started, he slammed into a box by the old stagecoach and everything stopped as he came to rest with his heart pounding and body aching, a big cloud of dust settling around him. And the second he had any motor control back, Dwight froze and went absolutely silent, breath held, just listening, straining for _any_ hint of noise.

On the little ridge above him, he could see Quentin watching him, eyes enormous, panicked, looking out over the silent town and then back at him—trying to figure out if he should come down and help, Dwight was sure, from the only half-checked urge to rush in very evident in the lines of his frame, and Dwight dragged himself up to an elbow as quietly as he could and held up a hand towards Quentin. _Don’t do it,_ he tried frantically to convey in silence, mouthing the words and locking eyes with his friend, _It’s okay. There’s no sound. Just stay put._ He kept a hand up towards his friend, praying it would deter him, and made it slowly to his knees, breathing shakily. Glancing back up the ridge, he shook his head at Quentin, then pointed to himself, made a motion with two fingers like walking, and pointed up to the ridge. Quentin nodded, still pale and on edge, but a little less desperate as the seconds ticked on and there was no motion from the ghost town to indicate the monster there had heard them.

 _Okay,_ thought Dwight, trying really, _really_ hard to stay calm, _Okay. No sound, no movement._ He peeked out from behind the boxes for a second, scanning the town. Nothing. No sign of the man with the gun. He ducked down, took another long, steady breath, and checked again, but everything was completely still. Empty. Dwight felt his frantic heartbeat slow back down just a little. _Okay. No Deathslinger. Oh my god I thought I was dead. Thank god—wow, is this actually happening to me? I got lucky for once?_

Go figure. He probably owed Ace a drink or something for this much good fortune, especially when historically, uh, luck had it out for him with a hell hath no fury level on par with a woman scorned. Trying to believe things actually _hadn’t_ turned out shitty for him for once, Dwight shakily pulled himself to his feet, still crouched in cover, and readied to spring up and run, picking out the easiest path back _up_ the embankment. Quentin saw what he was doing and hurriedly closed a few feet between himself and a small tree, wrapped an arm around its trunk to make himself an anchor, and then held the leaned out over the embankment and held his other hand out. Ready to bring him back to safety with a sprint up the bank and jump to the waiting hand. Dwight smiled. _I’m so glad it was Quentin. He’s reliable and he won’t give me crap about this and tell everyone once we get back to the fire._ There were a lot of reasons he liked him so much, but the level of dependable and loyal was for sure one of them. Feeling a lot better, Dwight counted to three in his head, muscles tensing, and then rushed for the bank.

The second he was out of cover, Dwight heard the shot, and on impulse, he ducked. The old instinct to a gunshot still to ingrained in his DNA saved him, and as he went flat against the dirt, he heard metal whir and then snap above his head as the harpoon went where he had been, hit the end of its chain, and fell short. Seeing the world in bullet time, Dwight rolled onto his back, barely even thinking yet, just following instinct, and he saw him then. The Gunslinger had made the shot through an open window in the saloon, hidden, waiting for a clear shot at his prey under the guise of safety, but he wasn’t hiding anymore. He was up on his feet and he was _coming._ Dwight knew from trial experience that he had maybe three seconds before the man could reload and take a shot again and he heard Quentin shouting for him to run, and he did, rolling over and scrambling to his knees, and with everything he had he bolted for Quentin, tearing up the ledge, leaping the last foot, and his hand caught skin and he felt Quentin’s fingers wrap around his wrist, and closed his own around his friends, and then as he being pulled up to the border of safety that was just inches away, and he heard the shot. There was no way to hide this time. Nowhere to run, or to dodge. He just had time to realize what was going to happen, and then the metal barb was through his torso and out the other side, and the hooks opened and plunged into his stomach like a grapple gun, and he was being dragged back with force, and he screamed, and for a second everything was just pain and confusion, and then he was looking up into Quentin’s face and watching his friend trying desperately not to lose his hold on him, horrified, and calling his name, and Dwight realized looking up into his face that if he didn’t let go, they were both dead, and that no matter what happened, it was already too late for him, and so he let go.

Quentin tried to keep him. Shouted, “No! Please—Don’t!” almost crying, and struggling with all his might not to let go too and to bear enormous weight and force with the strength of one hand alone, and Dwight was afraid he would be desperate enough that he would lose his hold on the tree before he lost his grip on him, so he wrenched his wrist free, still looking up into the frantic, betrayed horror and fear on his best friend’s face, and then he fell, jerked hard backwards onto the unforgivingly stiff ground again, and felt the chain connected to the metal rod through him dragging him back and he couldn’t see Quentin anymore. This had hurt before—hurt in trials, but it was worse—he didn’t know if that was real, of if it was the fear of the potential finality of death this time, but it was more pain than he could even process right, and as he was pulled backwards, Dwight caught onto the wheel of the old stagecoach as he passed it and looked back up at Quentin, terrified to die but not really feeling that, too in shock for that to be real, too out of control for his brain to look at, because it _had_ realized that there was no escaping it now, and so it was focused on his friend, who still had a chance.

“Stay there!” he shouted desperately, the second word melting into a scream of agony as the man behind him tugged hard on the reel in the mechanized gun, chuckling low and slow to himself somewhere behind Dwight, “Please! Quentin, go back! Tell them!” and he knew he’d meant to say something better, but the pain was too much then, and he lost his grip and was choking on dust, and then he was as the Deathslinger’s feet, barely processing that through the agony in his stomach. He felt the hooks release and the barbs slide free as the tall man in the leather duster placed a foot on his head, pinning him down, and freed his weapon. It came out of his torso with an awful _shlick_ and a ripping sensation that was unbearable, and Dwight tried to scream, but it came out choked. His whole body was shaking, and for a second he thought he was going to lose consciousness, but he didn’t, which was worse. He could feel the blood starting to seep out of his stomach and pool around him.

“Please,” begged Dwight, voice raspy from the dust he’d inhaled, looking up at what little of the man above him he could see with a boot crushing his head against the ground, “I-I know you have to hunt us in trials. Please don’t do this. I didn’t mean to come into your home. I would never—I fell.” His cheek was bleeding from being dragged, and he could taste the blood running into his mouth. _God, please, please care._ The Deathslinger was new. He’d never done anything to give Dwight any hope he might show mercy, but he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t either—he hadn’t been especially cruel and sadistic, and he was new, he was an unknown. Maybe… _Maybe._

The man above him grinned and raised his gun butt to ram down into Dwight’s head, and Dwight started to shut his eyes and brace, choking on despair, and then he heard a scream and he recognized the voice in time to open his eyes and catch a flash of movement as Quentin rammed into the man and knocked him off Dwight and sent them both flying back together in a heap. Dwight heard a massive crash and dragged himself shakily onto an arm in a really surreal mixture of dismay and incredible relief and a fragmented processing of time to see Quentin roll free of a broken water trough and lock eyes with him and scream, “RUN!”

Over by the saloon, that was all that Quentin had _time_ to say before he lost sight of Dwight as the Deathslinger made it up too and came at him, relentless and angry. All he could do was pray that Dwight _would_ —that he’d even have the strength to, and then he was dodging a swipe from the gun’s bayonet, and didn’t have the ability to think about anything but the man in front of him. He dodged left and avoided a second swipe, and then thought he’d moved in time to avoid a third, but the man twisted the blade horizontally when his thrust missed, extending the reach it had at its widest point, and he caught him in the outer arm with the edge of it, and Quentin felt the blade bite deep into his left arm by the shoulder and slice as the Deathslinger drew it back, and he cried out and fell back a step, trying to think frantically fast as he barely managed to duck out of the way of a swipe that came hard for him now that he was off balance and would have run him through the head if he’d been even a half-second slower. _Fuck—I can’t keep this up for too long—he’s so much faster than I thought. W-what if Dwight can’t run?_ He couldn’t see him anymore—he’d tried to move to get him in view again, but the Deathslinger had pressed him the other way and forced him too far back, past too many piles of debris now to see at all, and the Deathslinger was still between them, and God, he’d been hurt, bad, and—

Too focused on fear for Dwight, Quentin dodged right too slow and took a slice to his side and struggled to refocused on the Deathslinger as best he could, terrified for the friend he couldn’t see, but needing to buy him time. Fuck. He couldn’t focus like this. He. _Fuck-fuck-he was hurt so bad, what will we even do if we get him back to camp? Can we—_ Quentin ducked beneath a swipe meant for his head, only to be caught by a boot to the gut with tremendous force from the Deathslinger who had learned to anticipate his movements way too fast, and then he wasn’t thinking anything at all as he was flung backwards into a row of crates in the road not far from the stagecoach with a cry. He hit them hard, smacking his head against them with a _crack,_ and stumbled to his knees, barely even enough time to look up before the Deathslinger was there, bringing the bayonet down on him, and he flung himself left with the little energy he had left, too slow, and too late, and he knew it as soon as he moved, and then somehow the shot went wide and missed him, and he heard a scream in a voice he knew was Dwight’s, and there he was. Leaping onto the man’s back just in time to save him, and locking his legs around the Deathslinger’s waist, his arm wrenched around the man’s throat, trying to strangle him, and Quentin was overcome with gratitude and relief, and then fear as he saw the Deathslinger angle the gun back to run the blade into Dwight’s side, and thinking as fast as he could, he followed the first impulse his frantic brain threw his way and shot forward and threw himself like a bowling ball into the man’s knees, no time to make it back to his feet. As he went, he ripped the shard of glass he’d taken to carrying to defend himself in trials at Laurie’s advice out of his pocket and buried it blindly into the side of the Deathslinger’s right knee on contact, and all three of them went flying. Quentin heard Dwight cry out, and the huge monster of a man yell as the glass went in and then grunt in pain as Quentin took out his legs and he slammed backwards into the wooden base of the saloon, and then Quentin had rolled past him and was frantically struggling up again, spotting Dwight a few feet back where he’d rolled.

“Run!” shouted Quentin again, taking off for Dwight, and ripping a big handful of dirt from the road as he came even with the Deathslinger, who was still on his knees. Quentin pivoted, shouted, “HEY!”, flung the mass of dirt and dust into the Deathslinger’s eyes when he looked up, and then tore off towards Dwight again as he heard the killer hacking and letting out an agitated yell behind him as he tried to get the shit out of his eyes and mouth.

Dwight was up by the time Quentin reached him, clutching his bleeding stomach with one hand, but running hard. Riding adrenaline past the mass of pain he had to be in. As they tore off for the border, Quentin realized that the little gulley wall ahead would be easy enough for him to jump, snag onto a tree or something, and struggle up, but Dwight was fucked, and he desperately looked for other options. Something—anything. There was a spot a little to the right of where they’d tried originally, with a small tree growing up in the gulley itself, and thinking fast, Quentin called for Dwight to follow and made a B-line for it.

Out of breath, Quentin checked over his shoulder as they neared it, and saw to his relief that the Deathslinger was only just now making it to his feet again, gun not ready yet to take another shot, and he realized that if he could _just_ do this right, they were going to make it. Riding that hope like a drug, Quentin leapt the four-feet he had to to reach the lowest branch on the tree, braced his foot against the edge of the gulley wall, and reached out his free hand to Dwight.

“I got you! Come on!” shouted Quentin.

Dwight saw what he was going for and nodded, running hard and breathing raggedly, old white dress shirt streaked with blood. He made it the last three feet, jumped and caught Quentin’s hand, and Quentin, braced and ready, used himself as a fulcrum and swung Dwight up onto the safety of green grass and tall deciduous trees.

His friend landed painfully, on his side, but safely—about three feet from the edge. And he dragged himself up onto his arms and smiled in almost frantic relief at Quentin and started to call him to come too as Quentin shifted his weight to be able to shove off the trunk of the little tree and make it the last foot up himself, and then Dwight was gone, and Quentin’s smile froze and he felt shock overcome his system as the woods in front of his eyes changed.

 _No,_ Quentin realized, eyes wide, and feeling sick. The woods were shifting. The areas re-arranging _. Now? Fuck! Of all the possible times for this to happen?_ How? Why- _why_ now! The odds must have been incredibly low! This didn’t even happen every day—sometimes it wouldn’t happen for more than a week. But it had—it was. The killer areas, their own campfire. All the little microcosms that made up the world here in the Entity’s realm shuffling again to remain difficult to understand and travel, like a shell game made up of tiny worlds that the Entity played any time someone got too comfortable with understanding the layout of their little prison.

It didn’t matter, though. Fuck it! No matter what the woods became, Quentin had to make the jump and get out, or he was getting shot, and whoever the killer in the next area was, they wouldn’t know he was there immediately. He might be able to hide, to sneak through— _anything_ was better than here. He still had decent odds of being okay, no matter where he ended up—fuck, even if the Deathslinger shouted for the person in there to come find him, he’d have time to run, and that could serve as much as a distraction for him as anything else. All he had to deal with was flesh wounds, and he’d be okay even if he couldn’t dress those for a couple hours. The only real, immediate, terrible danger was that Dwight was now injured badly out in the woods alone, and already trying to plan the fastest way to find him again, Quentin had committed to the motion to jump when the heavy fog around the area in front of him shifted as the change in locations became truly set, and he saw a building he knew, and he shot out a hand and caught a branch on the little tree and jerked himself to a frantic stop, frozen in horror. Because it was the Preschool.

It was the Preschool.

And he could _never_ go in there. He _would_ never. He would rather die burned at the stake or bled out for hours on a hook, or to a reverse beartrap—anything— _anything_ death imaginable was better than setting foot in that place outside of a trial and being caught by Freddy, and…

The horror of that lightning-fast chain of thought and where it was leading hit him so hard that he stayed frozen for a full second. He didn’t make it from _I can’t go there_ to _I can’t stay here either_ nearly fast enough, and he realized that too late, and as he turned to locate the Deathslinger again and to try to regain movement and chase the miniscule chance he had of outrunning him and maybe making it to the far side of the area and another border and the possible freedom of whatever realm was there now, he heard a gunshot.

The barb slammed into his gut before he’d even seen where the Deathslinger had gone, and Quentin screamed in agony as he felt metal tear through his stomach and out his back, felt metal hooks open and embed there, and then the chain tugged.

He wasn’t ready for it, wasn’t ready to fight, and he lost his balance immediately and fell down the little incline and smacked his head against the hard earth, then tried desperately to make it to his knees, bloody hands clutching at the chain and trying to bear weight and lesson the agony in his gut each time it dragged him closer, struggling to break free as he went, or to fight back at least, to slow the process of being reeled in and killed. His heels dug frantically into the earth as even powered by overwhelming fear his strength wasn’t enough and he was dragged forward, each little yank sending waves of pain that almost completely destroyed his ability to think at all ripping through his entire body.

The Deathslinger was watching him with a grin and those glowing silver-white eyes, standing a little lopsided with Quentin’s chunk of glass still embedded in his knee, and in desperation, Quentin latched onto that tiny fragment of information as he was dragged closer.

 _You can’t die—you can’t die—Dwight needs you. Fuck—fuck. One shot, you have one shot—c-come on. Please,_ he prayed, and then he was there—so close he could have reached out and grabbed the man, and he felt the barbs in his back release and the bolt rip back out of him with so much intense agony it was everything he could do not to just collapse, and as the bolt came free, he saw the Deathslinger already drawing back a hit, going to plunge the bayonet into his chest, and in that half-second of free from the harpoon and not yet run through, Quentin put all his weight on his right leg and flung himself hard down and left, ramming his left foot against the piece of glass in the Deathslinger’s knee with enormous force. And somehow, it worked. He wanted to cry with relief. The undead looking man screamed, and the bayonet missed, and the Deathslinger went down, clutching his badly wounded leg, and Quentin hit the ground and rolled and came up all in one frantic motion, then tore off deeper into the ghost town, running as fast as his legs would carry him.

Everything was a blur, of pain and fear and desperation.

Somewhere behind him, he could hear the Deathslinger coming after him, but Quentin didn’t know where to go. He stumbled over old rotten floorboards and through the empty shell of a building to the left of the saloon, leaving streaks of bright red in his wake and unable to stop it, even knowing he was leaving _such_ an easy trail. Th-there was just too much blood. It was going out his back and his stomach and his arm and side and he couldn’t staunch it and run at the same time—it was all he could do to slow the bleeding in his gut as he tore off unsteadily through the ghost town. _Fuck, fuck, fuck. Come on. Come on—you can make it. You just have to get to the far side, and you’ve got a shot. He can’t follow you over the border, and you can hide in the brush somewhere, a-and stitch yourself up, and live—come on—I know I can do it. I know it._

God. Dwight. Fuck—fuck! Was he going to be okay? Quentin wasn’t even sure how badly he’d been hurt by the end of it. _He can still run, right? He can make it back._

There was so much fear and adrenaline in his system, and the thought of Dwight fighting to make it to the campfire and failing made him choke impulsively on a sob, and he stumbled, the emotion cutting off the supply of oxygen he so desperately needed and fucking up his ability to breathe right. He saved himself from going all the way down by catching the edge of an old crate, aware of the bright red handprint he’d left on it clearly marking his path as he made it back up to his feet and kept going, but nothing at all he could _do_ about it. He had to focus, he _had_ to, but. God—it was so hard. There were thirty things pounding against his skull for precedence, but he couldn’t listen to any of them, he had to just run.

Up ahead, he could see the border again then, the far one. Dead ahead. He’d run diagonally, not thinking straight. If he’d run right down the road, he’d have hit another border faster, but he hadn’t been thinking about speed, he’d only been thinking about visible cover. Still. He hadn’t heard a shot from the gun, and when he risked a quick look over his shoulder, he didn’t see the Deathslinger at all, and that _had_ to be good. _Okay, okay. Almost out,_ he told himself, focusing through the pain in his gut that kept begging his mind to just shut off his legs and give in and let him collapse.

There, across the border—Houses. Quentin could see them now, past a few trees at the edge of the new killer area up ahead he was fast approaching, and for a second he had an unbearable flash of deja vu and fear, thinking some fucking way it was Badham _again,_ but it wasn’t—it was Haddonfield. Quentin was terrified of the Shape, but right now, he didn’t _give_ a fuck. Anywhere except Badham Preschool was better than here, and he’d run and hide and patch himself up, and he could take his chances with the silent masked giant. And then only ten feet from the border, so close to safety, and almost the moment that he’d thought those words, Quentin saw him.

The Shape. He was standing there, just _almost_ completely behind a tree, watching Quentin run towards him. Quentin almost hadn’t seen him in time at all, and he skidded to a stop painfully four feet from the edge of Haddonfield, breathing raggedly and wanting to cry.

_No._

He could try. The left edge of the area and whatever killer realm was on that side wasn’t so far. He might make that before the Deathslinger got him. He had a chance, maybe, if he tried. But he had been so close, so close to making it, and he choked on the despair of that reality for a second, staring up at the Shape, half-considering just going in anyway. The Shape killed you quick. In here, if he tried and didn’t make the third border, especially after wounding the Deathslinger, Quentin was pretty sure that wasn’t what was going to happen to him. At least if he took three more steps forward and let the man in the white mask kill him, it would be over almost as soon as it began. That really might be the only choice he had left to make. Quentin had died that way a lot of times, and it wasn’t so bad. Kitchen knife to the heart. Four seconds maybe? He usually went numb as soon as the knife was pulled back out. Maybe he should. Maybe that was the right choice. He was in so much pain, and even if he ran as hard as he could, he didn’t know what area was on the left, and what if it was worse? What if there was a killer waiting there too, watching, like the Shape had been, and the Deathslinger must have been long before they’d ever seen him at all? If he got there and had to make this split-second decision again, but between Deathslinger and Cannibal. Deathslinger and Doctor, or Pig. Fuck, even if he got lucky, the less cruel killers almost all hurt more than the Shape did to die by. The only one that would be more merciful to him was the Nurse, and those were _such_ low odds.

The thought process had been almost instantaneous, and as he ran through it, the Shape met his gaze, and he could just barely make the outline of eyes beneath the shadow of the mask. Eyes fixed on his own. The man tilted his head to the side slowly, still studying Quentin.

 _“Please,”_ thought Quentin, wanting to cry and feeling blood leak past the hand pressed against his stomach as he held the towering shape of a man’s gaze longer than he should have, his mind begging him to say it out loud. He wouldn’t, though. There was no point. He had seen people beg the killers for mercy in trials, had seen Dwight try it less than three minutes ago with the Deathslinger. They didn’t care. They just liked to hear it.

The things that hunted them in the dark did not show mercy.

 _Fuck._ Quentin turned left and ran.

That had always been what he’d been going to do, because he fought, and he tried, and he didn’t _give_ up, even when maybe it would be less painful to, but he’d wasted too long considering an easier death, and as he turned, he saw those few seconds had cost him. The Deathslinger was in sight again, following the visible trail of blood and then looking up and seeing Quentin in the instant too—no longer needing the old trail to find him.

Without another look back and with everything that he had, Quentin tore for the left border fifteen yards away. He wasn’t even holding his wound anymore, he was pumping fists at his side, every ounce of focus and energy he had left just on running. Back in his first year swimming, his coach had taken the team aside early on and told them that speed-based sports weren’t about raw skill: they were about how much pain you were able to withstand. When you swam, you’d go faster the less you took breaths, the more you tore at your muscles and made yourself keep going and going and going when every part of you ached and your chest was pounding for breath and your head throbbing from the effort, muscles screaming with strain. Had told them that was how great athletes were made. Quentin hadn’t really thought about it much after, but he was thinking about it now, praying it was true, and that the agony ripping him apart would be enough to get him across the far border if he could just _take it_ until then. That that price would be enough.

There was something behind him, a faint clink of metal as the Deathslinger went to take a shot, and Quentin recognized it and jumped a foot to the right, into Haddonfield, praying the impulse would work, and the harpoon slammed into the invisible barrier between realms that survivors could pass over and killers couldn’t an inch from his chest and pinged off, and Quentin flinched and jerked away from it on impulse, no time to recognize mentally that the shot had missed and his idea had worked. As soon as him mind _had_ made the connection, though, he leapt back into the Deathslinger’s land, because he had no idea where the Shape was and if he was coming after him or not, but he wasn’t about to find out the hard way. Still not even risking a look over his shoulder, Quentin tore on towards the far border, only about four yards away now, and he recognized it without the ability to feel any emotion associated with the sight itself, only relief at the lack of another large person with a sharp object already visibly waiting just inside it to kill him.

It was Ormond. Snow, debris, and the ancient, rotting lodge. And Quentin dug deep and, in agony, made the last five feet faster than he’d ever run in his life, and then he was over. Feet crunching against the snow, breathing raggedly, and the second he was, he stumbled and fell to his hands and knees, fighting for breath, unable to keep running now that he didn’t have to, ripples of pain running up his torso with every movement, and feeling nauseous and lightheaded and awful, but so sick with relief he wanted to laugh.

Barely thinking functionally at all, Quentin clutched an arm to the wound in his stomach, and looked over his shoulder now that he could, and saw both of the others, the Deathslinger and the Shape: the Deathslinger right at the edge of the border, as far as he could go, furious, glowing eyes burning with hatred and fixed on Quentin, the Shape a few feet back and into Haddonfield, near the end of one of the streets that went nowhere, just watching in silence.

Swallowing hard, Quentin made himself get to his feet again. The moment he did, black seeped into his vision and he almost collapsed, and he stumbled a half-foot left and caught onto a large boulder to keep himself upright. _S-shit. I’m. I’m not doing so hot,_ he realized in a kind of disconnected way. That…that made sense. He’d lost a lot of blood. For all he knew, he could be bleeding internally too. Even if he could stop the bleeding in his gut and his back, he still might die before he could make it back to the campfire for help. But at least he—

Behind him, Quentin heard a low laugh, and he froze and then turned slowly to look, and saw the Deathslinger was grinning at him. The man glanced down at the wound seeping blood and then back up at Quentin’s face, still smiling. He must have realized it too. Quentin shot him a furious look. _Fuck you. Even if I don’t make it out, you still didn’t get me. And I’m gonna be fine. I. I-I just have to—to stop the bleeding. And then I can sneak out and find whichever one of these stupid realms borders the campfire, and I can get safely back to the others._

“You better run.”

The words had been spoken low, almost a whisper, but not the kind that was worried about being overheard. Darker than that. And horror and shock washed over Quentin, and he looked up again, eyes wide, and the Deathslinger was still just standing there smiling at him, glowing eyes fixed, eternally broken jaw hanging just a little bit wrong.

The tall man met his eyes then, and held up his right hand. Slowly, he turned his head and looked at the bright red staining his fingertips, and then he licked them, like he was tasting to see whose blood it had been and where they were hiding from him now. As he did, he met Quentin’s eyes again and held them, and his smile broadened just a little, and it wasn’t a good smile. It was hungry.

“We can all smell blood,” whispered the man.

No killer had _ever_ spoken to him before—well—besides Krueger, which was different. They just—they didn’t. They never had. _Never._ And for an instant it petrified him, and then dread set in as the words hit home.

_Fuck—fuck. He’s right. They all track us by how we bleed. And it’s worse than that—I have to move. He’ll want me to get caught even if it’s not by him—if I don’t get out of here, he’s going to start calling for the Legion and I’m fucked._

Quentin backed up, clutching at his stomach and staring at the Deathslinger in frozen horror, and then he turned, and with energy that had already been stretched far too thin, he ran.

Ran, or, tried to. He was so beyond exhausted though, it was practically a miracle he could move forward at all. He stumbled quickly through debris and snow, trying hard to go fast, and keep his footing, but after a few seconds, it was too hard to keep a pace like that going anymore. Ormond was different than the other realms too, like the Deathslinger’s ghost town. It was the only place with snow, and it was _freezing_ here, and that wasn’t helping. Quentin was already shaking badly, and he didn’t know if it was temperature or blood loss or both, but God, he was _so_ cold. He felt like the air itself was sucking the life out of him. H-had it—had it _ever_ been this cold at Ormond in trials? He couldn’t remember, and he was having more and more trouble thinking right, and with no real idea anymore where he was going, Quentin plunged on through the snow in the darkness, towards the lodge, and then finally stopped, breathing hard, well out of sight of the border now and feeling a little safer for it, listening for sounds. There was nothing. No Deathslinger calling for the Legion, no shouts of the Legion noticing his presences. So. Maybe he’d made it. Maybe he was in the clear, and could hide now, and try to take care of the wounds.

 _…Only_.

He realized it with a sinking heart, and slowly looked down at the snow behind himself, and there it was, plain as day. Footprints and a blood trail, leading back the way he’d come like a bright neon sign reading: “I’m already fucked up—Come kill me. It’ll be easy.” Even the worst killer at tracking in the world wasn’t going to miss something like that. If he’d been leaving an obvious trail before, back in the Deathslinger’s place, he was impossible to miss now. Bright red against crisp white snow. There was just. No way _anyone_ would miss that.

“Fuck,” whispered Quentin out loud, trying hard to think, and having a harder and harder time doing it at all. He reached up with his left hand and found his necklace and held it in his fist, trying to draw some tiny modicum of comfort and reassurance from it, and he thought absently and with a twinge of pain in his chest like a muffled sob, how much his legs ached and his stomach was killing him, and how tired he was, and his legs gave out on their own at the thought like he’d asked them to, and no strength to resist that, Quentin slid down into the snow, back against some square hunk of metal he’d stopped by that must have had a mechanical purpose once that was lost on him now, out here in the ruins.

Everything was so impossible. And he was losing energy so fast that didn’t even scare him much anymore, and he knew that was bad—he knew it, but. _Fuck_. He still hadn’t even caught his breath after that last mad sprint, and he tried to do it now, huddled in the snow, shuddering. It was _so_ cold.

 _C-come on,_ he tried to plead with his failing mind, _You can figure this o-out. You made it. Just…just lie low, and stitch yourself up._

That had been the plan, right? Only. It wasn’t that simple now, he realized, looking up at what he could see of the dim, snow-covered terrain. There was no way he could stay awake long enough to fix himself up out here, and then just hunker down in a snowbank and wait to get his strength back. Every second, he was losing more and more of what little strength he had left, and with the blood loss and the cold both eating at that tiny reserve he still had, he’d never make it. Even if by some miracle he was wrong, and found a way to power through long enough to stitch himself shut, he’d freeze to death outside in a snowbank as weak as he was, which meant…

Quentin looked at the lodge, only about sixteen feet off now, maybe twenty. A big, empty, looming shape in the night, glowing oranges and yellows and reds leaking through cracks in boards and broken windows, promising warmth and safety inside. Promising shelter. But that was a lie, and he knew it, because that _had_ to be where the Legion would be waiting.

 _Still,_ he considered, shuddering in the cold and keeping his arm firmly pressed to the hole in his gut. The lodge was big—two stories. It was a good place to hide, and creep around in trials, and that might still be true now. If he could make it upstairs, it would at least be warmer than outside, and the walls would protect him from the windchill. There were spots behind ancient couches and crates in some of the little rooms on the second story he might be able to get cover behind and not be discovered, even if he passed out. Plus, a blood trail would be harder to follow in there than out here in the snow. It was a shot, anyway. Better than any other option he had left.

 _Maybe,_ thought Quentin wearily, in a kind of disconnected way, feeling sick as he hooked his arm over the top of the square hunk of metal he’d slid down against and struggled to make it back to his feet, _after…after all the bad luck I. …I just had back to back. Maybe Legion will be…in a trial, right now. Maybe I’ll have good luck, just once, and…_

He tried to bear his weight on his legs alone and almost crumpled, and cursed under his breath, catching onto the hunk of metal with both arms shakily and dragging himself back up, then letting go more slowly. His vision felt fuzzy and off as he looked down at the spattering of red in the torn snow by his feet and the huge smear where he’d slid down along the old hunk of metal. Everything about it was wrong. It was like he was looking at the world through goggles that had fogged over. He tried blinking to refocus, but even after his third attempt he just…couldn’t focus right. He _just_ couldn’t.

 _This is bad,_ thought Quentin, taking a step much more carefully and managing to stay upright this time, arm pressed against his abdomen again. He took another step, and then a third, focusing on breathing, trying to not think about how many more steps it was going to take just to make it inside the lodge. _I’ve lost…lost too much…blood…and-_ He shut his eyes for a moment and took a long, deep breath, then opened them.

 _Come on._ No giving up. He could do this. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he was alive, and he was thinking… _okay_ still, anyway. Thinking coherently enough, he was pretty sure. So he could make it. He still had a shot. _Come on. You can’t give up._ Quentin dug the fingers on the arm pressed against his wound into his palm until it hurt, trying to focus on something beside the cold and the real pain in his stomach and the way each step was harder then the last, and he kept going, slowly, but steadier and steadier as he went, and he made it shakily into the open doorway of the waiting lodge.

It was different inside the lodge than it had been in trials. There were pieces of cloth with words and symbols on them hung up in some places like ripped flags, boxes, furniture and paraphernalia in places it wasn’t set in his memory. But at least the layout was basically the same. Staircase leading up on the far left side of the room, bar on the right. Dead ahead there was a little lowered area with cushions around a big open wood stove warming the massive room, and he wanted nothing more than to go crawl over and collapse against it in the hope it could produce warmth for him when he very shortly lost his ability to make his own anymore, but he couldn’t. That was the most conspicuous spot in the whole lodge, by far. He’d be found in seconds.

 _Upstairs,_ he told himself, forcing his legs to move again, and then two steps into the room, he stopped, feeling dizzy and sick, remembering for the first time that there was more than one way upstairs in the lodge. _Right. Two…t-three staircases?_ Several, anyway. So. He should—should probably go back into the snow, right? Circle around the outside instead. There was a staircase outside that led up from out there too, in trials, at least one—he was sure of it. He could find it if he circled the exterior wall long enough. So…he…he had to, didn’t he? If he took the indoor one, he’d be leaving smears of blood all across the room on his way.

Quentin turned to face the snow again, beyond utter exhaustion, and his right leg buckled on him at the first step. He cursed in pain as he went down, and he tried to catch himself with his left leg, but he fell wrong, and the leg he’d been hoping to catch himself with caught against the arm pressed to his stomach as he went down, ramming it back and slamming it hard against the wound, and he fell forward and barely muffled a scream of pain as the impact sent debilitating waves of agony along his torso. He dropped against the floor and curled up, huddled there shuddering in a little ball, fighting not to make noise and to weather the pain tearing through him in agonizing waves until it subsided enough to think again. It took _so_ long. But when the spasms finally stopped after what felt like an eternity, Quentin forced himself to open his eyes again. It was hard, but he did it, very, very slowly, and he tried to focus his vision on the wood grain of the wall opposite him. He had been tired before—he had been beyond tired, beyond exhausted, beyond a lot of things, but God. He was so fucked up, and overwhelmed, and lost, and the heaviness and exhaustion in his bones was so insurmountably stiff and painful that he felt like there was no energy left in the whole world. _I’ll never make it upstairs,_ thought Quentin without enough strength left to feel a stronger emotion to accompany the thought than sad, _I can’t._

For a moment, he stayed there, huddled in a little ball about a foot into the ancient Ormond lodge.

_God, please. Please help me. I need a miracle or I’m gonna die here. I’m gonna die here, and Dwight… Just. Just please. Please. Anything. Please._

It was such a desperate and lonely thought, because it was the only hope he still had, but he tried to believe in it, even though there had been nothing but unanswered prayers and silence for years now. He found his necklace with trembling fingers and held it in his fist for a moment, eyes shut, trying to regain a little strength, and then slowly he opened them again and pushed himself up onto an elbow.

_Come on. Get up. Get **up.** I know you can. … Fuck._

He had known it would be bad, getting run through by a spear gun like this—he’d fucking know what it’d feel like _exactly,_ because it had happened to him a bunch of times already in trials, even though the Deathslinger had only been here a couple weeks. But he’d had no idea how serious the wound would be. In trials, you felt everything at complete reality. If you got hit in the head with a sledgehammer, it would _feel_ like fucking getting smashed in the head with a sledgehammer. A hook ripping through your torso to hang you like a piece of meat would feel exactly as awful and unthinkable as the act did in reality. But in a trial, rules were different. You could be unhooked, and run around with a huge fucking hole in your shoulder, and that would never kill you. Never make you pass out. The shock of having a chainsaw slam into your shoulder wouldn’t make you faint, and save you from the pain. Nothing would. Quentin had definitely lost more blood than humans had _in_ their bodies in a lot of trials, but that was just how they went. You’d feel the real sledgehammer to head pain, but not the aftereffects of that. Just the impact. It would happen, and be fucking agony, but you could keep running, head not actually bashed in beyond repair. The Entity must have put really specific rules in place to balance what could and could not cause fatality, or when someone could bleed to death—because he’d _definitely_ fucking bled to death on the ground a lot of times too. But not every time he damn well should have. It might have been hard to explain exactly where the cutoff was, but even if Quentin had no real idea what the rules for a trial would have looked like on paper, he had a pretty good instinctive grasp on it. And the debilitating pain from being shot through your stomach was exactly like what he was feeling now, but the blood loss and weakness and nausea were new. And fuck, fuck they were taking him down fast—way faster than he’d thought. Was he dying? _Am I? Fuck—how—o-oh shit. Fuck._ God, he really, really hoped Dwight was okay. Shit. If this was messing him up this badly so fast, did that mean…? B-but he’d been in their forest at least, right? A few minutes from camp at most, and—and even if he hadn’t had the strength to make it back, if he had shouted for help, someone would have heard him, right? Someone would have been able to come. He wasn’t dying in the woods. He wasn’t. _…God. Fuck._ “Please. Please let him make it _,”_ he prayed in a desperate whisper, trying to power through the bottoming-out fear that came with that thought, and ashamed he hadn’t thought of it faster, digging his shaky fingers into the pocked of his coat for the needle and thread he always kept there as he did.

 _Okay. Okay I still have it. That’s…something. Wait. I. I should…should find something to sit up against first,_ he thought wearily, looking around at what was near him. Usually there was a big stack of boxes and junk piled up by this entrance, between the outside and the couch up above the fireplace and lowered area in the center of the room, but that had all been moved in this version of the lodge. The couch was still up, but the boxes had been pushed closer to the walls, and set in different places. He’d walked right in the middle of this opening, and it had been a huge entryway. To craw to the wall on either side would have meant dragging himself about five feet at minimum, but he’d gotten lucky, and someone had left a couple of the big boxes from the wall that _had_ been up here at one point, and the closest one was only about two and a half feet further into the room, and it looked pretty solid, and that, he thought, he could make. Could try to make, anyway, and he did, dragging himself painfully across the wood floor on his side, teeth gritted and breathing hard, and when he reached it he gave himself a second to breathe, and then with intense effort pulled himself up so his back was against it and let out a shaky breath.

 _Okay._ No Legion yet. That was a mercy. Maybe he would keep getting lucky. _If I can’t make it upstairs, I can at least try and stitch myself up here. Stop the bleeding, bandage it a little. I don’t have much, but I’ve got a roll of thread, a needle, and some gauze, and that’s okay for now. If I’m still too weak to go upstairs once I’m done, I’ll go crawl into one of the cabinets under the bar or something. I-I think I could make that, even like this, and I’d probably have…okay odds, of holing up there without getting found. Right? I know it’s a lot of blood,_ he added mentally, looking with shaky vision at the stain he’d left on the floor crawling to the box, _But they won’t know to be looking for it, and they’re covered in blood all the time from killing us. Probably they have to track **some** in, right? Maybe that’ll…be…be enough, and…_

Fingers trembling, he dug into his pocket again for the needle he already knew was there. It was okay. It would be. He could do this, he was sure of it. God, he hadn’t felt this awful in a long time though. For a moment he hesitated, and lifted the left arm he had pressed to the wound in his stomach away to try and get a look at the injury underneath. He couldn’t actually see the puncture at all though, through the fabric. Just blood. _Fuck, I don’t even know how bad it is y—_

“Hey!”

Quentin’s head shot up, a jolt of alarm shooting through him, and he looked across the room for the voice’s owner in horror. There was a hole in one of the walls caused by a cable car that had fallen and embedded there, and standing in the unintended entryway the old metal frame had created, stood the Legion.

_Oh fuck._

Tall and menacing, elevated on the little platform, it loomed over him at a distance. The thing was one of the male ones, the one that wore all black. A hood up, thick belt slung over a shoulder, wickedly jagged and curved hunting knife in hand, white dripping skull painted on top of his cloth mask. The thing was staring at him like he couldn’t believe Quentin had had the audacity to exist in this space.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!” snapped the Legion at him in a mixture of anger and disbelief, and Quentin was so shocked he just stared up at it in horror, not remembering to speak in time, or move, or do anything, and then the looming figure moved and it came for him, incensed and advancing in long strides with a violent purpose, knife ready in hand. “You think you can just sneak onto our turf?”

“Wait!” said Quentin, snapping out of the moment of frozen horror as adrenaline he hadn’t known he still had kicked in and ignited panic. He tried frantically to use the box like a brace for his arms to help drag himself back to his feet, but the strain was enormous, and he was failing. _Fuck!_ “Wait, wait, wait!” shouted Quentin desperately as the thing kept coming, talking so fast his words ran together, “I-I didn’t sneak in!—I got chased—" and then the Legion was on top of him, and he saw the guy lunge for him with the knife, and he flinched and gave up on trying to make his feet or talk and just threw his arms up to shield his head and fell back a little against the floor, shutting his eyes and trying to brace. The knife didn’t connect with his arms like he’d anticipated, but the Legion didn’t stop either. It shoved his arms aside with a burst of anger, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and dragged him violently up. Quentin cried out in pain and opened his eyes as the rough movement sent a wave of agony along his body. He instinctively clutched his wound with his right arm, struggling to deal with the pain, and while the agony of the first motion was still too much for him to even really process what was happening through it, the Legion jerked him closer and he fell forward, so beat to shit already that it was all he could do to try to catch himself with his left arm to keep from landing on his stomach at the guy’s feet. He wouldn’t have really had the strength to keep himself propped up like that, but he didn’t have to bother; the Legion wasn’t about to let go of him. It had a firm grip on his shirt and was keeping him suspended with it, radiating fury, and while he was still off-balance, the masked killer yanked him towards its face by his collar and leaned in close, shoving its knife against his throat. Quentin blanched at the touch of metal biting into his skin and turned his head away a little, breathing raggedly and closing the eye closer to the knife on instinct while trying to watch Legion with the other, struggling to bear some little bit of his weight on his left arm to keep from being dragged forward any more. It hardly mattered. It would take such little _fucking_ effort for the thing grabbing him to drag the knife the three inches to the side it would take to slit his throat, and there was _nothing_ he could do to stop it. It had already drawn blood, and he could feel a little droplet running down his throat from where the knife had cut in.

“You fucked up coming here,” growled the Legion threateningly, adjusting its grip a little, and Quentin tried very hard to stay absolutely still, because the knife was pressed in so deep against his throat now that it would only take a fraction more effort to slit it sideways through the vein it was pressed in very, very close to.

 _He’s going to kill me,_ thought Quentin, staring into the face of the thing with its knife to his neck and feeling sick and overwhelmed, breathing too fast and too shallow now to really be able to get enough air into his lungs and feeling the pressure of the knife and the pain of it cutting in against every breath he took as he was hit mercileslly with memory after memory of having his guts ripped open by the guy above him. _F-fuck. No. I-_ His arms were shaking. _I should fight back—I could—_

“Think you’re hot shit, huh?” snapped the Legion jerking him and drawing a little more blood with the knife.

“It was an accident!” pleaded Quentin desperately, meeting the Legion’s eyes and hoping there might be some little bit of a person left inside this thing that hunted him and the people he loved endlessly in the fog, but all there was in the dark brown eyes looking back was anger, like he’d known there would be. Killers didn’t listen. They didn’t care. There was no hope to be found appealing to them, and there never would be. “I didn’t—” started Quentin, still trying even though he knew it would be futile, because it was all he had left, but he barely got the two words out before the Legion flung him backwards against the ground without warning and with so much force that for a second after impact he couldn’t breathe at all.

“An accident?” the Legion gave a disbelieving almost laugh, tone still violent and full of fury, but his voice sounded distorted to Quentin’s hearing now, and he barely took the words in at all. The impact had stung, and his head swam from it, throbbing pain running down his backbone and ribs as he lay on his side where he’d fallen. He needed to get back up. Needed to fight, or to run, but he didn’t have the energy to do either. _Come on—fuck it! Please! Please try! You can’t give up like this! Just try! Please. Please try._

Quentin gritted his teeth, beating down his body’s urge to cry at the pain it was feeling, and dug his fingernails into the wood grain of the floor. Fighting desperately with everything he had left to focus, to find some way to move. _You can’t pass out. You can’t. Please. Come on. Try. Come on!_

Above him, he was aware of the Legion straightening up and moving beside him, talking as it did, but its voice still sounded muffled and off. Quentin couldn’t make it off his side, so he turned his head to look up at the killer, breaking raggedly. Struggling to make out words.

“Now you’re gonna pay,” said the Legion darkly, and he kicked him.

Quentin realized what would happen and tried to shout something, but it turned into a scream of anguish as the shoe collided with the injury in his gut. Debilitating pain shot through him on impact, and he jerked, and his vision went white, and then all that there was was intense agony and unbelievable suffering. So awful, so overwhelming, so much of it, that for a second, he thought it had killed him.

But it hadn’t. He was still awake, still aware. Somehow. Somehow the pain wasn’t enough for his body to be willing to give in, even now. And then he felt himself convulse, but it was different—it wasn’t like that motion had ever felt before. It was barely like he was in his body at all anymore, and the pain was gone then, mostly, with the convulsion, and he just felt exhausted and absent and disconnected and sick. His vision came back blurry, and he felt himself tremble and shudder violently again, and then again, more weakly, and he realized what that was, and just stared emptily at nothing on the far side of the room as he faintly felt the sensation of blood seeping out of his stomach and against his limbs as it started to puddle around him.

 _It did kill me,_ thought Quentin hollowly, feeling sick, and heartbroken, and distressed over the fact that he couldn’t feel even those things very strongly. That there was no one to say goodbye to, or to ask to tell Dwight none of it had been his fault and that he was just glad he’d made it. …If … _if_ he’d made it…

But there was no one to say that to. And Quentin knew what it was that was happening to him, because he had seen it happen to animals when they died. Jerking like this. There was a name for it he couldn’t remember. He didn’t have the energy. Not for that, or for anything anymore.

God, it was lonely. It was so lonely. It was scary in a way he had never thought about before and couldn’t even really understand because there wasn’t time to. But he was afraid of the loneliness, he just. He wished there could have been. People. Friends. Any of them. When…

Seeking the only comfort he had left, Quentin tried to move his hand up to find his necklace, and couldn’t.

Something touched him then, and flipped him over onto his back, and he looked up with blurry, failing vision as his body shuddered again, and he watched the Legion stare down at him in an almost frozen shock. It bent quickly and tugged up the bottom of his shirt and took in the wound, and it said something he couldn’t really hear.

_At least the…pain stopped…_

Quentin took an agonizingly shaky breath, and struggled to keep his eyes open. He didn’t want to die. To. To just…give in. But it. It was hard. His eyes kept shutting on their own and he could only force them up for little fragments of time before he’d lose to the weariness that had overcome him and they would shut again. He felt another shudder run along his body, but it was different this time. His vision started to go dark with it, and it didn’t come all the way back this time when he opened his eyes again. He felt like since he knew he was dying, he should do something—say something. He wanted to—he _needed_ to. But. He. …he didn’t…didn’t know what...to...and...he was…alone…no one left to…

Above him, the Legion said something again, but he couldn’t hear it at all this time. Could barely even make out its lips moving. It put a hand on his gut and he faintly felt a dull ache at the touch, and the black-clad figure tugged off its mask, and he couldn’t understand why it would have done that, but for just a second he was seeing a guy, maybe…maybe eighteen or something? Looking down at him, with an expression that was hard to place. And the Legion said something kind of frantically, but there was no sound Quentin could make out to accompany the blurry visual. He felt his body giving up and tried to fight against it, desperately wanting to live, but the exhaustion overcame him then and his eyes shut and wouldn’t open again this time, and his consciousness faded with it only a few seconds after, and Quentin blacked out, dying in a pool of blood in Ormond at the feet of the person who’d killed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading the first part of New Dawn Fades. Put a little of this up on my blog a while back, and decided to bring it to AO3 too. Joey and Quentin have a rally interesting relationship dynamic and it's one I've always had a lot of fun writing, and I'm very excited to get to chill and write it some more. I have a little bit more of this fic written already, so the first two updates'll p come pretty fast, but it's gonna probably update pretty sporadically/be more of a laid back project for me in general than like, ILM was--hope you still enjoy reading. <3
> 
> Research Notes:
> 
> Out of all the DbD realms, including outside of trials, Glenvale is /the/ only map to feature the sun at all. While it's a setting sun, barely up at all, it's still /there/, and after in some cases /years/ of darkness in the realm, I can only imagine that the first time seeing it was an overwhelming blessing and moment of relief as well as brutally painful nostalgia for all of the survivors--and honestly, probably about all the killers too. Canonically, the Deathslinger--Caleb Quinn--was taken by the Entity through a trick. While a violent criminal already, rather than snagging him and winning him over by torture, the Entity messed with his mind and overtook his mind to make him see all the people who had wronged him throughout his life inside the realm, and introduced working for it in trials as a way to punish them, so he canonically sees the survivors as his old enemies. Like a number of the characters--The Wraith, The Hillbilly (and debatably to a different extent possibly The Doctor, The Spirit, and The Huntress)--he has Entity touched eyes, which appear as glowing white with no pupil (or all pupil might be a more accurate description). For a long time, the meta theory has been that the characters with this vision issue are actively influenced by the Entity in what they see to some extent, and the canon confirmation with Caleb makes this hold even more water (interesting to note here that while the Doctor's glowing normal eyes could be seen as just part of his electricity aesthetic & the Spirit's white-out eyes don't really glow and are likely just a result of being an Onryo--as most Onryo are depicted this way, that Anna's eyes are /definitely/ altered, but, instead of the glowing 'Entity-Touched' eyes like Max, Caleb, and Philip have, hers are all black pupil, which to me would suggest that it does mess with her visual perception, but in a markedly different way/for entirely different purposes than it does Max, Caleb, and Philip).
> 
> While it seems doubtful that Caleb would /never/ figure out something is up and he's not actually hunting his old enemies over and over, no matter how much visual and sound hallucination he's getting, it seems likely it would take him some amount of time to really figure out anything was up. This is really just a trivia bit, not research, but at this point in this story, he's reached the 'Okay, /some/ things seem a little off' stage. Probably if not stopped, his intent would have been to knock out Dwight and take him back and keep him prisoner to get information out of. Which uh, could have ended a lot of different ways, some much worse than others. Luckily, crisis averted. Caleb's an interesting killer for DbD, because while most killers fit into three basic categories: Feral, Manipulated Victim, and Serial Killer--there are two real exceptions to this, and they are Caleb, and the Legion. The Legion was a group of teenagers who commuted one completely unplanned, almost half accidental murder, and hadn't even really had time to process that before getting snagged, and Caleb was a violent criminal, but of the fairly average kind, not the serial killer kind. Not that Caleb was a good person--when imprisoned for assaulting the man who cheated him of the patents to his inventions, he made torture devices for the warden to use on other inmates in exchange for comforts while jailed, and in exchange for an early release and a shot at revenge, hunted down everything from killers to just petty thieves to help his warden ally fill a prison and gain money, and did it in the exact same brutally cruel way too, hunted down with his speargun. Still, a person with few qualms who is /willing/ to enact a good amount of cruelty if it helps their ambitions is a pretty far cry from someone who tortures and murders for the fun of it, which makes him a really interesting addition to the killer lineup. Just like Legion is. More on Legion next time, though.
> 
> Thanks again for reading!


	2. Subjective Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joey faces an accidental, unplanned murder for the second time in his life and is given the chance to make things end differently.

Joey Harmin stared down at the body at his feet in shock as its head lulled lifelessly to the side and it stopped moving.

“Fuck! No—come back!” he shouted at it, voice intense, but struggling to keep the cry hushed at the same time, suddenly worried about being overheard by one of the others. M-maybe that would be good, though? They might know what to do. And he—he had no _fucking_ clue—just— _What the fuck! What the fuck?_ thought Joey frantically, trying to keep up in his head with everything that had just happened.

God he—he hadn’t meant to… The guy had been trespassing on their turf, probably to steal shit, he’d thought—which was stupid of a survivor to even try, and no way they could tolerate that, but. _God damn it!_ He hadn’t known! He hadn’t—

Shit, there was blood—blood fucking _everywhere_. How had he not really noticed it before? He was just…so used to seeing it, on them, and on everything, and he’d—he’d been so surprised just to see a survivor in here at all. He hadn’t meant to kill him! He was just trying to rough him up—to scare him! Teach him a lesson so he would be afraid to come back, and so would the others, but—

 _Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck._ He felt all wrong suddenly. It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed people before, but trials weren’t the same. Those people came back, no matter how dead they’d been at his hands. This wasn’t like that at all. H-he shouldn’t have felt wrong like this—that was weak, and stupid, and dangerous. They did what they had to, serving the Entity, or _they’d_ be the ones ending up dead, and this shouldn’t matter either, but. But he was seeing the cleaner from Ormond’s face when he’d stooped over him while he was already bleeding and shaking, just like this guy had been, and buried a knife in his chest. He. He hadn’t…wanted to kill the…he…it had…everything had been _so_ fucked. A-and now he’d…

For a moment, he lost time, caught between old memories of the shaking man on his knees in the little store Joey used to work at, the terror and pain on his face, the way it had felt in his hand the first time he’d buried a knife in someone’s body, and the pile of new memories from seconds ago. The look on this guy’s face when he’d seen him in the doorway, the way his voice had sounded trying to explain himself, the awful scream when he’d kicked him in the gut, no real idea yet what he’d done, and the vacant look in his eyes just now before he’d passed out, like he didn’t even really have enough life left in him to be scared anymore.

 _What do I do?_ thought Joey, frozen, one hand still pressed against the guy’s stomach where he’d left it, instinctively trying to stop bleeding before he’d thought about even what he _wanted_ to have happen.

He could call Frank. Call Julie, or Susie—ask them what to do. _Fuck,_ thought Joey again, eyes on the still features on the face of the boy he’d just killed, _I didn’t mean to—I didn’t._ He’d had no idea he was fucked up like this already. A-and it shouldn’t matter. _I should call Frank. He’ll know what to do. We’ll figure it out, and it’ll be fine. I can’t get in trouble for killing a survivor who came on my turf on his own, right?_

That was smart, and he should do it, but he still felt frozen. Everything seemed surreal and wrong. He knew this guy. —Well, he didn’t _know_ any of the survivors. They never talked to them—they weren’t supposed to, in trials. But he’d seen him enough to recognize him. Somehow that was true, and he’d still never really looked at him enough to notice what he looked like before—not in a way that was real. But he couldn’t be any older than Joey was—he was probably a little younger. Another teenager. Somebody who could have been a classmate. Maybe he _had_ seen that before, or maybe he hadn’t—he didn’t even know—but either way, it had never _meant_ something before.

_Fuck._

He looked so awful like this. Joey…except for the cleaner, he…hadn’t ever actually really stopped and looked at a body before once he’d…finished with them. A-and he hadn’t meant to this time—he. He. _Fuck! Fuck! I can’t…I didn’t-I. I just…_ Joey didn’t want to look at the corpse anymore, but he couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t make himself look away. He was transfixed by the aftermath of what he hadn’t meant to do, by the person he’d never even _really_ taken a good look at before, his curly light brown hair, matted now, with sweat and blood. The guy was so perfectly still it was surreal. You didn’t notice people moving when they were asleep, but they did, Joey was only just realizing, because he could _definitely_ sense the absence of it now. God, it felt so wrong. It made everything even worse. Out of all the survivors, this was probably the one who usually looked the most fucked up already, even before a trial began, but set now against the ghostly white and blue tint of his skin with so much blood lost, even the bags that were always etched in under the guy’s eyes looked so much darker and more pronounced than they had any other day he’d ever seen him. _Fuck. Did I really never even look at you before?_ There was so little left to look at to try and guess who he had been. The survivors never had much on them. All he had was a beaten-up field jacket, a torn T-shirt with some kind of tree on it, and then a necklace that Joey had never noticed before. It had blood all over it too, but he reached over with his free hand and picked it up, trying to tell what it was, still not even really thinking actions or impulses through, lost completely to the shock of what he’d accidentally done. The necklace was a thick black cord with a little ornate metal cross hanging from it, and a small pendant that was so tarnished from use he could barely make out the figure and _“Sacred heart of Jesus have mercy on us”_ etched into it. There was blood that looked very much like a thumb print making the last four words almost impossible to read.

Beneath him, Joey thought he sensed movement. When he looked, it didn’t seem like the guy had moved at all, but it hit him suddenly then that it might not actually be too late. He might still be alive, and not past saving, and frantically Joey let go of the necklace and snatched up his knife and dragged the blade against his sleeve, cleaning it, and then held it to the guy’s lips. It took a moment for him to be sure, but he saw a little fog against the blade and felt relief slam into him that was so intense he wanted to throw up with the strength of it.

“Oh god, you’re still alive,” he said out loud to the still form, his whole body shaky from the realization.

 _Shit, but I don’t know anything about medical care,_ thought Joey frantically. He considered calling Julie, because she seemed the most likely of the four of them to have _some_ idea what to do, and then it hit him that he…probably couldn’t. Not if he wanted this guy to live. Because. …Because Frank would want to kill him, wouldn’t he?

Joey felt his heart sink.

Frank would. He was so dedicated to keeping the group safe, he always put that first, and helping a survivor even once might get them in a lot of trouble. If he told Julie, she’d tell Frank. And probably if he told Susie, she’d tell Julie. So. So he was alone in this.

 _Fuck, but even if I can keep him alive, how could I keep them from finding out!_ thought Joey desperately. There was no way—there were a couple of things he _knew_ they were bound to notice. And if he tried to do this and hide it, and got caught, he could get in so much fucking trouble, and—

He looked down at the guy’s face again. His right hand was still pressed against the wound in the survivor’s gut, trying to staunch bleeding. Joey hadn’t moved it since he’d seen the wound. He could feel the guy’s blood leaking up through his fingers and it was not a sensation he liked. All he could think about was the way it had looked when he’d been convulsing and then looked up for a second and met his eyes. So fucking hopeless and dead.

 _Fuck it,_ thought Joey.

Moving quickly, he dug through the guy’s jacket pockets with his left hand, hoping to find something he could use. He could try to make a needle out of a chunk of wood, or some wire, a compass needle if he had to, and he was already working through best possible things to use if he failed to find one on the backburner as he searched, but he knew he’d seen survivors pull medial supplies out of their pockets in almost every trial, and when he went for the guy’s right bottom jacket pocket, he took a needle through the hand, which fucking hurt, but he didn’t even care, because he was so relieved to have found it. The guy had a needle, a thick roll of thread, an empty bottle of meds, an empty syringe, a lighter, and a small gauze roll on him, and that was it, but that was more than Joey had really expected, and he took the needle and thread and shoved the rest of it into one of his own pants pocket, and then got to work.

_Okay. How bad are you hurt?_

Trying not to hurt him worse, but not really sure how to be ‘gentle’ and ‘fast’ at the same time, Joey tugged off the guy’s jacket and then got his shirt over his head while the guy let himself lifelessly be moved, out cold. _Okay. Four wounds_. No. Three. The guy had some bruises on his back and head and arms, a big one forming on his stomach, and the little scratch on his neck Joey had made, but the only real _injuries_ were a slice on his left arm, and a much smaller one on his left side that had already pretty much quit bleeding on its own, both of which looked like knife wounds of the kind Joey himself could have caused, and then what Joey had at first thought was two wounds, one on his gut, one in his back, and then realized in slow horror wasn’t that at all and was really a puncture wound running all the way _through_ him. Like he’d—like he’d fucking fallen off the roof of a building and come down onto a snapped piece or rebar. There were little tiny punctures in his back too, around the exit wound, like it might look if someone had run their whole arm through your stomach and then dug their claws into your back when they were through—well—no—it was way too thin a puncture for that—if it had been anything even _remotely_ like arm-thick he’d have been very dead a long time ago. But still. It was so weird, and it was a terrible wound to have, and Joey had no fucking _clue_ what kind of weapon could have done that to someone.

 _How the fuck did you get hurt like this?_ he wondered, laying the guy back down on his back and hastily wrapping the arm to slow bleeding and buy time while he worked on his stomach and back.

Still feeling like he was having an out of body experience, Joey wiped at the blood on the guy’s stomach enough to be able to see the wound, took the needle and thread and tied off a length, then bent over him and hesitated. God. He’d never done anything like this before.

 _Well, you can’t make him any worse,_ he told himself, _He’ll just die if you do nothing. Worst you do is fuck up and he still dies. Not fuck up and you kill him._ That was something. Right? Joey had never stitched a wound, but he’d _gotten_ stitches. Off and on since forever. When he was little, he’d been jumping on a bed for fun with his older brother, slipped, and smacked his forehead against a bedpost and torn it open. His dad has stitched that. And it had only been the first time. He’d gotten stitches…four times since? Once when he got hurt in a fight, not long before ending up here in this shithole hell, once doing high jumps for a competition and falling badly, and twice just doing something stupid to show off. He at least knew how it worked.

Nothing to lose, Joey dug the needle into the skin of the guy’s stomach, just blindly hoping the he was getting enough skin, but not too much, going deep enough, but not too deep, and he started to sew the puncture shut. It hit him as he was doing that, that if the guy was bleeding internally, he was just fucked, because Joey had no idea how to even _tell_ if that was going on, let alone fix it.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky,” he told the motionless body beneath him, like that might encourage it. He didn’t know why he was talking to it at all. _What the fuck am I doing?_

He didn’t know, but he didn’t stop. He stitched the stomach wound shut fast and a little ragged, but it _did_ stop bleeding. And once he was done, he picked the guy up and leaned him against his chest, head hanging limply over his shoulder, and started to stitch up the back wound with him more or less in his lap. He was too afraid to set him down on his stomach and do it that way, because the guy was already barely breathing as it was, and he didn’t want to make it any harder for him by putting weight on his lungs. He didn’t think he could take it.

It was so weird to be doing this. The survivor was cold, but not like a corpse. Joey…knew what those felt like, at this point… And this was. Was more like how it felt to pick up a survivor who had crawled away and hidden, trying to bleed out instead of die to the pain of a hook or a mori. More dead than that, but closer to that than to a corpse. And that had to be good, right?

“Come on,” said Joey quietly to the lifeless teenager half slung over his shoulder as he tied off the hasty, jagged stitches he’d left in his back, “You’re not dead. Just stay alive a little bit longer, and you’ll be okay.”

How much longer did he have to get this done? _Shit, let me think._ It was the end of what Joey kind of thought of as a “day” already. They’d had a trial, had some time to talk and strategize, work on learning new skills they’d picked up spying on other killers in the next areas over. Usually, they probably would have _all_ been asleep right now. The only reason Joey was even up was because while the rest of the group seemed to have been able to adjust after a little to the noises of the realm and the killers in areas around them, Joey had become about 4x _more_ of a light sleeper than he’d been in the outside world. The worst was if they ended up next to the Nurse or the Doctor’s areas. He could hear the fucking electricity in the Institute going off for who had any clue what god damn reason at all hours, and it made him on edge, and if anything the Nurse’s pained shrieks and gasps like she was constantly being drowned by someone were even worse. If they were stuck by someone loud and he was the one whose turn it was to get his body some real rest, Joey always put on headphones or something to try and block the noise out. But, they hadn’t been _by_ anyone loud, so he’d gone to sleep normally tonight, only to be woken up to what had sounded like a fucking gunshot. _That_ hadn’t been fun. He’d gone out to check, and found that the woods had indeed shifted since when he went to sleep. There was a weird old western place he’d never seen before bordering them now, along with the Shape’s realm, Badham Preschool, and the ruined lab realm. Which meant that assuming the gunshot sound had come from the wild west place (and he was pretty damn sure it couldn’t have come from the other three), every single one of their neighbors was going to be a fucking insomnia nightmare for him except the Shape, and he’d been super frustrated by that realization and still thinking about it when he’d stepped into the lodge and seen a survivor brazenly sitting in his living room by a box like he fucking owned the place, and the night had gone from bad to worse.

 _Only. You weren’t, were you?_ thought Joey, gingerly laying the unconscious guy back down and wrapping his torso with the gauze he’d stolen from him, then finally moving to his arm to stitch the gash there. He’d said it himself, and Joey hadn’t listened. Had been so caught up in the disbelief of finding a survivor chilling out in his living room, he hadn’t even thought twice about _why_ he was. _You said you got chased,_ thought Joey, closing the wound on his arm as carefully as he could, _And didn’t mean to come here._ He had no idea how the fuck the guy had ended up getting chased in the first place, because he’d never seen a survivor outside a trial before, except at a distance during times Ormond had been beside what must have been the survivor’s home base area, but he believed him now. He had wondered for a minute if the gunshot he’d heard had been what happened to this guy, but it couldn’t be. Joey had seen gunshot wounds, and they _would_ go right through your whole body, but they didn’t look like this. This had been something sharp—not a bullet, a puncture. Plus, a bullet would have torn up all his intestines and killed him probably before he even made it to Ormond at all. So what the fuck had happened to him?

…God it was _so_ surreal to be doing this. Patching someone up? After life in this place? And not just a stranger even—someone he’d hunted himself before. Had _killed_. How weird was that? And still. It. Somehow it felt…kind of nice. He had no idea why—it should have been frustrating, or nerve wracking, or something, right? And he _was_ nervous, sure, but not in the way he’d have thought. And that wasn’t even what he was feeling the most. It was really worrying how blue the guy’s lips had gotten, and some of his skin, but he was still breathing, and Joey _had_ stopped the bleeding, and he was kind of… _proud_ of that. Proud that he’d made the situation less bad. That the guy might live because of him. Even if he’d…kind of caused the problem…

He ran out of fabric from the tiny roll of gauze the guy had had on him about the time he was thinking that through, though, and had to leave him for a minute to snag some from one of the piles of paraphernalia they had stacked on shelves and in boxes. They’d used a bunch of cloth to make blankets and flags and shit, but there was still some of it around that they’d just stored because they hadn’t had a use for it yet. Joey found a pale blue chunk of fabric that had been some kind of curtain once and went back over to the guy to slice it up, but when he got there, the guy had been different. His skin was still tinged with blue, but he was stirring a little, face scrunched up in pain, head moving just the tiniest bit in fitful, weak motions, and Joey was excited by that—thinking it was good, and that he might wake up, but he didn’t. And after a couple seconds of watching him as he tried to make the blue fabric into more bandages as fast as possible, he became steadily more and more afraid that it wasn’t good at all. That it was worse. A lot worse. The unconscious guy was breathing shallowly and raggedly now, and he was soaked with sweat like he had a terrible fever or something, but when Joey reached out to touch his forehead, he wasn’t hot at all; he was freezing. His skin was wet and cold to the touch, like a corpse almost, and it scared him.

“Shit,” whispered Joey, drawing his hand back and watching the dying teenager’s forehead scrunch up with pain as he became aware of some amount of it in full again, even in his unconsciousness. The guy let out a weak moan, and then went still for a few seconds, mouth just a little bit open, struggling to even just breathe. _I-I don’t know how to help you._ Fuck, he’d thought he’d done it right. He’d thought…

Joey shut his eyes. _Okay. Okay. Think. He’s…_ He was really cold. Okay, that one Joey could fix. Working even harder to be gentle than he had before, but probably doing a worse job unintentionally in his building anxiety, Joey took his fabric and looped it around the guy’s torso a few times, and then ran it over one of his shoulders so the dressing wouldn’t slide down when he moved, and then when the bandage was secured, he slid his hands beneath the guy’s back and legs and picked him up as gingerly as he could, careful to avoid touching the wounds at all, and carried him over to the fire.

As soon as he picked him up, the guy let out a weak sound of pain, and his head slipped lifelessly against Joey’s chest, eyes still shut. It was almost like carrying a dead body, but Joey tried not to think about that. He was trying not to think about a lot of things. This was—it—it was so fucking weird to be doing this. He. In trials, sometimes it would be really dark, and full of fog, and he could barely see the survivors at all, and he would lash out when he found them on generators, and he’d know who they were from the sound of their cries of pain faster than the sight of their face, and he knew the voice of the guy he was carrying—he knew the sound of his scream, and his cries. He had hunted him down by listening for the muffled sound of him trying to choke back any vocalization of pain with a hole through his chest. And he was feeling so different about hearing that sound right now than he ever had before. It was _so_ weird. He looked down at the pale, shallowly breathing guy in his arms and tried not to think about how he knew he looked dead with his chest and stomach cut open, gutted like a fish. But he was seeing it anyway.

And he still _really_ didn’t want him to die. Even facing the image of having done it himself before. It all felt so overwhelming, and wrong. And why? It…would be different, maybe, even killing someone outside of a trial—if—if he really _had_ caught this guy stealing or something, and gone over and stabbed him. But. But this had been an accident. And killing someone like that…it… He was seeing the cleaner’s face again, looking up at him with terror, pleading in his eyes. Seeing the way this guy had looked scared too, but then just looked hopeless, after he’d kicked him, because he’d been absolutely sure that Joey was never going to stop.

God, that was too much to think about and figure out, and he just couldn’t. And anyway, it didn’t matter right now! He’d decided he wanted this guy to live, he could figure out why he wanted shit later. All that mattered at the moment was figuring out how to actually do that.

Joey had made it to the fire by then, and he set the guy down gently on the padded seats circling the brazier like some kind of huge singular round couch, and the guy groaned weakly, and flinched, but stayed still. It was pretty warm here, about four feet from the fire, but he was worried it wouldn’t be enough, so he took couple of the cushions from off the seating area and laid them down right by the brazier, and then picked the survivor up again, and moved him over on top of them

That seemed better. It was a really warm fireplace, and the base was brick, so even the floor around it stayed heated and insulated well. Joey snatched an ancient throw blanket from one of their chests and came back and put it on top of the guy to help him maintain a little heat, and then sat there by the fire watching for a couple of minutes, not knowing what else to do. Nervous, but a little hopeful. For a while, he couldn’t see any real change at all, and that hope started to dwindle, and then after what felt like four hours but couldn’t have _possibly_ been more than one at the very most, the guy started to look a little more okay. The ragged, frantic breathing got a little less shallow. He shuddered a couple of times, and kept sweating, but it was less bad, less feverish, and his skin gradually got warm again. Joey had no idea if that was his body remembering how to work, or just the fire doing work for him, but either way, at least he wasn’t going to die of hypothermia. And very, very slowly, he looked just a little less blue. His lips were still pale, and there were tinges of the color left in his skin, but it was a paler blue, more mixed with sandy white, like his skin was supposed to be. Just a little bit less horrifying to see. Less dead.

“See,” said Joey quietly, relaxing with his back against the seats around the fire and a leg stretched out, smiling and watching the unconscious guy’s face as he began to breathe less desperately. More like someone who had just run a race, less like someone who was being choked to death. “Told you you’d be okay if you could just stay alive a little bit longer. You’re lucky it was me. Probably the others would have just killed you.”

He was proud of that. Why? _Shit, I have no idea what I’m doing,_ thought Joey, still smiling and too happy that it was actually starting to look like the guy wasn’t gonna die to be very worried about that at all. He could figure it out, right? He was gonna have to pretty soon here…

 _Well, okay. Let’s think. I can’t tell anybody else he’s here, or they might kill him,_ considered Joey, working slowly through his options by the fire, _I can’t just go take him to the border and dump him somewhere safer, because there’s nowhere safe to go right now. Even if he knows where home is, he’d have to go through western land, the wrecked lab, Badham, or Haddonfield to get there, and he’s not walking anywhere like this at all—definitely not gonna be able to outrun another killer._ That meant he’d be stuck here for a little, then. At least a couple days. The woods sometimes shifted after only a few, but sometimes it was like, two weeks or something, so there was just no real way to be sure how long, or even if Ormond would border the survivors’ place or not once they _did._ It could be a lot of weeks before that happened…

Joey grimaced, thinking that one through.

 _Okay, then._ There was really only one option in that case. He needed somewhere to hide him. Trying to talk the other three into being chill with this could probably only go shitty and get the dude killed, so hiding him was the only out, and if he had to keep them from finding something as big as a human being, there was really only one option for _where_ he could hide him, because they all got bored as shit here, and everybody wandered around Ormond to explore and dig through stuff or just kill time, and the only place in the entire lodge he’d be pretty sure someone _wouldn’t_ walk in and find the guy was his own room, because they each had a room, or space they’d claimed as theirs now, and no one went into each other’s places unless the room’s owner wanted you to. It was literally the only privacy any of them ever _got_ out here. So. That was it.

 _I’m gonna have to carry you upstairs, then_ , he thought at the body. And in not too long too, because the others wouldn’t stay asleep forever. Even with all the work he was putting in to make sure they’d stay down and out and not hear the shit going on right now. That meant leaving the fire, but the guy looked better now, right? And he could take extra blankets upstairs with him. So that would probably be okay. _I’m gonna have to clean up the blood and stuff too though, I guess?_ thought Joey, glancing around the lodge for proof of the survivor’s existence and doing his best to compile a mental list of evidence to erase. That was all doable, though, he felt pretty sure, so it made him feel a little bit better to have a plan.

 _Still, what if you wake up and try to run away,_ considered Joey, turning his head and studying the guy’s unconscious expression. He seemed out hard. At this rate, the survivor might not even wake up until Joey wasn’t around, and that would be _really bad._ And then of course, even if that didn’t happen, and Joey was there when he did, the guy might just panic and still try and run away no matter what he said or did, and if that happened, then he’d just end up getting killed. Plus, if the guy was alone when he woke up, he also might try to steal their shit. …Or…or maybe even attack one of them if he got the chance, which Joey hadn’t considered at all until just then, and was kind of an alarming thing to consider. He kept his eyes on the unconscious teenager’s face, feeling unsettled for the first time since the guy had passed out, and a little bit unsure about what he was doing. “How did you get out here?” he asked quietly, knowing he’d get no answer, studying the way the guy’s soft features looked with deep shadows and orange firelight flickering across them. “Somebody attacked you and chased you, so you went _somewhere_ dangerous on purpose. Not here, but somewhere. Why would you do that?” No answer. No answer he could really figure out on his own, either. But he guessed it… _could_ be that he’d gone to try and kill one of the hunters that got them in trials, couldn’t it? Maybe he would wake up here and try again. _That’s crazy,_ Joey tried to reassure himself, _No one would be ballsy enough for that. It’s like, certain death._ Still. He was gonna have to be careful. Joey didn’t know—anything could happen. And if he like, hid this guy, and then the guy woke up and jumped Susie and was able to hurt her because he hadn’t warned the others there was anything here to be worried about, that would be super fucked up. …But.

 _No. Come on. There’s no way,_ Joey told himself, trying sort of futilely to shut off his building paranoia and still watching the guy’s face, _He’s mostly dead—he wouldn’t be strong enough, even if he wanted to._ Plus, wouldn’t he probably just be grateful he wasn’t dead whenever he woke up? …Still. Joey didn’t know. Not for sure. The only thing he knew for even close to sure was that if _Frank_ found out one of the survivors was here, the survivor was dead. Other than that, he— _oh fuck._

Fuck. That wasn’t even the big unknown at all. What would happen if the _Entity_ found out what he’d done? _Shit—I—oh man. I-I didn’t think about this at all. What even—?_ What would it _do?_ Would it be glad he’d kept him alive? Mad that he _hadn’t_ killed him? Pissed off he hadn’t tried to call it? Fuck, should he have done that as soon as he saw the guy? It had never given them instructions for this kind of a situation! It wasn’t supposed to happen! He—he guessed he could have called it when he saw the guy, but Joey had never done that before. The Entity freaked him out, and the only time it usually showed up here was to hurt one of them for not doing well enough in a trial—the idea of trying to summon it himself made him queasy.

 _…But then, if I had,_ he considered, heartrate slowing back down a little as he glanced over at the guy at his feet, _Who knows what it would have done to that guy, even if it wasn’t mad at me for calling it. He’s definitely breaking rules if he’s out here._

What did that look like, when it happened to a survivor? What did the Entity do to them? He really had no idea at all. Technically, he didn’t even know if it punished all the hunters the same way. Considering the shit that happened to survivors on a daily basis even when they _weren’t_ breaking rules though, it was probably… “…Pretty nasty,” whispered Joey to himself, imaging what that might look like for a moment.

For a few seconds, Joey considered his options in the silence of the lodge, and then he let out a deep breath and stood up, decision made.

“Do us both a favor, and try not to wake up for about half an hour?” Joey quietly asked the unconscious form at his feet. There was no sign that it had even remotely registered the sound of his voice, but that was good, and feeling more secure, Joey smiled at it and then turned and went back up into the room to get supplies.

On his way, Joey spotted his mask over where he’d taken it off, and retrieved it and put it back on—feeling kind of stupid and weak for having pulled it off in the first place. He wasn’t totally sure why he had. He’d wanted something—to make the guy he’d just nearly killed feel less something, he guessed, but he didn’t really know what it had been. What did it matter, anyway. He was supposed to be tougher than that. It had been a stupid impulse. Joey quit thinking about that and tried just to focus on getting supplies. Finding them didn’t take long, but he still felt the need to rush through it, afraid something would happen while he was gone. But by the time he got back over to the guy about three minutes later with rope and duct tape, nothing had changed except that a little more color had returned to his skin.

Joey smiled for a second at the sight of that and stooped beside the guy, feeling his forehead. “You seem better,” he said to the unconscious body, “Not great, but better.” The guy made a sound weakly as Joey withdrew his hand, and his brows furrowed for a moment like being touched had hurt him, and then his expression became mostly blank again, just a little bit fitful and drawn, but his breathing sped up for a several seconds before it slowed again. Joey wondered how much pain he was in. Probably a lot. It was lucky for him he was unconscious, at least. Maybe he would stay that way for a while.

“Okay,” said Joey in almost a whisper, finding the guy’s hands and carefully placing them together on his chest, “Just try to stay asleep if you can. This is for you own good.”

Carefully, Joey took the rope and wound it around the unconscious survivor’s hands, securing them a the wrist tightly, but not so tight he thought it would hurt him. It was pretty decent rope, and the guy was weak, so he probably didn’t have to work too hard to make it hard for him to get free, and once Joey felt secure his knots wouldn’t be easy to get out of, he tied the guy’s legs together at the ankle too. The survivor turned his head a little and made a few quiet, slurred sounds of vague distress as he worked, like someone having a bad dream, but remained more or less unresponsive. Pretty relieved this had all been so easy, Joey wiped a little of the sweat off the guy’s face with the blanket and tore a piece of duct tape free, then carefully secured it over his mouth to keep him quiet.

When he’d finished, Joey took a breath and then went to pick the survivor up again, and hesitated, looking down at the guy and feeling unexpectedly weird about it. Kind of bad. All he was doing was being practical, because if the guy woke up and made noise or tried to run away, he was gonna get killed by someone, but it…it didn’t feel good. Looking at someone like that—someone he’d done that to. Joey had never tied somebody up before. Even all his time in trials, fighting and killing and hunting people down. It. It was different. That had always been kind of…fair. Everybody started a trial healthy. They didn’t have knives, sure, but they had a fighting chance. A lot of them were older and bigger than him too, and when he beat them, he beat them. They died, and he won, and the trial ended and after a bit another would begin. And it felt… Really different. To be crouched over somebody weak and injured, tied up and gagged, and not even conscious to _try_ to fight back. That wasn’t fair, because he wasn’t even doing anything to the guy—he was trying to help him, which was pretty fucking generous of him to even be doing, but it still…

It made him feel slimed. Like he had done something really bad. Just to be kneeling there over him like that. And he couldn’t figure out why.

 _I’m not doing this to beat him up or something,_ Joey told himself, trying to shake the unpleasant feeling that had settled on him. So why did it feel so bad?

The guy looked so fucking helpless and weak like this, even more than before, when he’d been more blue from blood loss. Head lulled to the side, eyes closed, mouth taped shut, injured and breathing weakly and shirtless in the cold. But he wasn’t gonna do something bad to him, so why the hell did he feel like this?

 _Fuck it, I don’t have time to figure this out!_ Joey snapped at himself internally, distressed for multiple reasons now.

“Come on,” said Joey out loud, trying to power through. He got his arms under the survivor’s back and legs again and lifted him up. The guy let out a muffled whimper as the way he was being held bent his torso, aggravating the wound, and his breathing sped up and his head moved a little in unconscious distress, and then came to rest limply against Joey’s chest again. And god, that made him feel so much fucking worse.

 _What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re not doing anything bad! You’re going out of your way to be nice to this dumb survivor that got in trouble on your doorstep—you literally could have just let him die and that would have been okay. You’re doing the opposite of something shitty! Stop being a fucking idiot about this,_ he berated himself internally, turning to walk carefully upstairs. Even after a few more attempts though, the internal verbal abuse did not make the feeling go away.

Giving up on beating the feeling out of himself and trying hard to instead focus on thinking about nothing at all, Joey took the stairs carefully. It wasn’t like he’d ever slipped on them or anything, or like the guy was super heavy, but it _was_ dark, and it would be just his luck to have this be the one time that would happen. The steps weren’t easy on the guy he was carrying either. He was trying to be gentle, but he was pretty sure being moved hurt, because every couple seconds the guy’s face would scrunch up in pain, or he’d make faint whimpers and sounds of distress, and try to shift a little unconsciously to find a position that hurt less without really having the strength to do that.

They made it up to the landing, and Joey started up the second patch of stairs, and he felt the guy shift in his arms again and glanced down, like he’d been doing every time that had happened, only this time Joey froze and then double-took in shock, because the guy’s eyes were open.

Not very. Just a little crack. And they shut slowly, and Joey started to take the next stair again, relieved, but watching him carefully, and then of all the fucking luck, the guy opened his eyes again and blinked a few times weakly, looking very disoriented and barely conscious, bleary eyes unfocused, trying to figure out what the wall he was staring at foggily was. _Oh fuck—please go back to sleep,_ thought Joey, freezing again.

The teenager made a muffled, faint sound somewhere between confusion and pain, and blinked again with a little more effort, struggling to keep his eyes open and breathing weakly, and Joey watched his eyes focus in on the arm supporting his legs, and saw them suddenly go wide with recognition and horror, and the guy’s head snapped up to look for the person the arm belonged to, and for just a millisecond of frozen time they were meeting eyes, the half-dead survivor still a little unfocused and out of it, but incredibly awake now, powered by unfettered desperation and horror, and then the moment was over and everything was a blur of movement as the bound guy in his arms started fighting like a demon to get free. He shouted something Joey couldn’t make out past the tape, which was doing its job, but not well enough, and Joey saw horror flash across the guy’s face again as he heard his voice come out muffled, and registered the gag.

“Stop!” hissed Joey, trying frantically to hold him still as he thrashed in his arms.

Panicked, the guy did not stop. He shouted something too muffled to make out again—maybe it hadn’t even been words, maybe it was just alarm, and he tried to elbow Joey in the chest and had a hard time, realizing too late his wrists were bound, and Joey saw—saw in bullet-time as the guy he’d saved realized what was happening to him. Joey was catching with perfect clarity every single time a new piece of information damaged the survivor—could see the horror and fear and hopelessness, and anger, and anguish as this guy about his age attempted to form links between new fragmented facts with a damaged and exhausted brain, realizing that some of his clothes were gone and he must have lost time, and that whatever had happened to him between the last time he had been awake and now, it had been bad, and that he was in so much trouble—that he was tied up and gagged and injured and weak and being taken somewhere by someone who had nearly killed him the last time he had been conscious. And still, Joey didn’t get it quite that fast. He was too lost to the sudden panic of realizing the tape didn’t muffle the guy nearly enough, and the reality of what would happen if someone heard, and so as the mostly dead guy he had hurt so many times before without a second thought started frantically trying to tear himself free and fight back in a situation he really had no hope or chance at all of escaping and despite how much every single movement must have been agony, crying out with loud and frantic sounds of protest through the tape, Joey reacted on instinct and slid down onto the stairs, back against the banister to be able to use his knees for support and hang onto the guy while getting an arm free at the same time, and he hooked his left arm far enough around the survivor to get his hand over his mouth as he did, covering nose _and_ mouth both to try and shut him up, and suddenly the sounds _did_ almost completely shut off as he completely cut off the other guy’s airways. The teen kept struggling frantically even without air, terrified and suffocating now too, feebly trying to hurt Joey with elbows that had very little room to build up force for a strike, and still, still he wouldn’t just give in and stop.

“I said stop!” hissed Joey, letting go of his legs to draw the hunting knife and jerking it threateningly close to the guy’s face as fast as he could.

The guy saw the knife coming and flinched on instinct, shutting his eyes and turning his head away, braced, breathing raggedly shallow and fast with the tiny bit of an airway Joey had relented and given him again when he saw he was choking. He only kept his eyes shut for a moment, though, just long enough to appease the instinctive fear, and then he opened them again, still breathing raggedly and with his head turned as far away as he could get it with Joey’s hand on his mouth holding him in place, and he looked up at Joey with worryingly dilated pupils and wide eyes, and his expression had fear in it, which Joey had expected, and confusion, and dread, and a lot of other things, but while those feelings were there, what the look was overwhelmingly filled with was an overwhelming mixture of despair and pain and hate, and he realized looking down into his face and feeling him shudder in his arms that even though he knew if he fought back he was going to die, the guy was going to fight back again in a second anyway, and Joey realized only then, staring into the eyes of someone looking back at him in a way not even people he had killed had ever looked at him before, why he had felt so awful tying him up even though he was only trying to help. It was because he had known. Not consciously enough to pick it out easily when the slimed feeling had settled on him, but somewhere close enough to be present, he had known deep down that this guy wouldn’t know, when he woke up, what Joey was doing or why or what he wanted, and that even if he wasn’t doing anything bad at all really, this guy was going to wake up and be completely sure that he was about to do something even worse than kill him. That even if what he was doing was objectively okay, it wasn’t going to be okay to the person he was doing it to at all. And everything he had been feeling finally clicked for real in a rush like a sudden downpour of rain as Joey registered in a kind of awful and unsettling way that in the last ten seconds alone, he had inflicted way more suffering onto this guy than he had ever meant to at all. It had been kind of fun, in the past, to scare people. Joey had liked that. It was nice to be powerful and on top and scary. But it did not feel good to inspire _this_ kind of fear. Not at all. It felt awful, and wrong, and he felt guilt twist in his gut like a knife as he realized what he, for the second time tonight, hadn’t meant to do to the guy he was holding, and just how bad it had really been.

“Wait, wait!” whispered Joey quickly in an entirely different tone of voice, drawing the knife back and keeping his hold on it with a thumb so he wouldn’t drop it, but holding the rest of his fingers up in a gesture of peace, “I know you’re freaked out, but I’m not gonna hurt you!”

There was confusion in the other guy’s expression, and mistrust, but just the tiniest bit of desperate hope too, and he hesitated, listening, still disoriented and only barely feverishly conscious at all, eyes on Joey’s face. He could feel the tension running through the guy’s whole body, and sense the frantic, weak thud of his heartbeat, pressed up against him like this.

“I’m not,” promised Joey again quietly, trying to sound reassuring, “But you _have_ to be quiet. You know there’s four of us, right? The other three are around, and if we wake them up, I don’t know if they’ll kill you.”

The guy’s eyes moved to the side quickly, thinking, and then he looked back up at Joey and tried to say something, but it came out barely a noise at all through the tape and the hand over his mouth. He looked down at what he could see of Joey’s hand and then back up into his face again, distressed.

“That’s why I did that,” explained Joey, feeling a little reassured because the guy hadn’t gone back to fighting him again yet, “In case you started shouting again when you woke up. Look. I bandaged your wounds—I wouldn’t do that if I wanted to hurt you. I know I kicked you before, but I didn’t know you were already hurt. Okay?”

The survivor blinked, a little more unfocused again with what must have been a desperate adrenaline rush starting to fade now, and he looked down at what he could see of himself, taking in the wrappings on his chest and stomach, then looked back up at Joey, wary and shaky and confused, but this time the look wasn’t awful, like it had been before, and it was such a fucking relief.

_Oh good!—He’s thinking clear enough to understand you. I think he’s listening._

“You need to rest, or you’re gonna die,” said Joey quietly, working hard to sound calm and non-threatening, which was a weird tone of voice to shoot for, because it had been so damn long since he’d tried to sound anything but intimidating at all, “I’m gonna take you up to my room, because it’s the only place I think nobody might find you—we don’t go into each other’s spaces, so you should be safe there. Okay?”

The guy looked to the side again, thinking, and then held up his wrists a little and looked at them, then at Joey, still mistrustful and on edge and a little shaky.

“Well, I can’t stay with you the whole time, but I can’t have you going around stealing our shit either,” explained Joey, because he just really didn’t think he could justify _not_ tying him up _and_ lying to the gang about him being here.

The survivor gave him an incredulous look.

 _What?_ thought Joey, confused, _It’s a valid concern. I don’t know you._

The guy thought for a moment, and then slowly reached up a little and pointed to the gag and the hand still over his mouth and met Joey’s eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” said Joey slowly, releasing his hold very carefully, kind of wary, “I can take that off—but you get that if you make noise, someone will come kill you, right? You gotta stay quiet.”

The guy nodded.

Joey found the edge of the tape and ripped it off, and the guy winced and gave a quiet, pained grunt as the motion stung. _Shit._ “Sorry,” whispered Joey.

The survivor blinked for a few seconds, kind of squinting and brows furrowed, like he was struggling to focus at all, and then he looked unsteadily up at Joey. He started to say something, and then got an unfocused and almost worried look on his face, like he’d forgotten what he’d meant to say and that had scared him, and then he tried again, finding Joey’s eyes beneath the mask and holding them shakily.

“I don’t…I-I don’t understand,” he offered with a lot of effort, like talking alone had been a feat. The guy’s voice was quiet and weak, and he didn’t look good. He was breathing shakily still, but a lot slower, which Joey had thought meant he was freaking out less and was a good thing, but he was suddenly kind of thinking might mean he was about to pass out again instead. “W…why?” asked the guy, “Why…did…?” He tried to say something else, and grimaced, struggling hard to keep his eyes open and losing that battle slowly, and whatever he’d been going to say just became a weakly pained sound instead.

 _God you look awful,_ thought Joey guiltily. He could feel the guy’s body trembling from the effort of staying conscious. He didn’t think he’d really ever seen someone look as helpless as this, and he was feeling a lot of different ways about it at once, which was confusing and too difficult to parse. In his arms, the guy was struggling really hard not to pass out again, and he looked sick. Joey wanted to answer him, because then maybe he would quit fighting that, and probably passing out again would be good for him. He knew the guy was trying to stay awake because he was afraid to lose consciousness and be unable to defend himself again, but he wasn’t exactly sure what what he’d said had meant. Why which thing?

“Come on,” said Joey instead, trying hard to sound reassuring and sheathing his knife, shifting to stand up again, “I need to get you somewhere safer before people wake up.”

The guy tried to say something, but whatever it had been turned into a weak whimper as Joey stood up and the motion hurt him. “W…wait,” he tried kind of desperately again, unfocused and shaky, and then he sucked in a sharp breath and stopped what he’d been trying to say, squeezing his eyes shut and wincing in pain as Joey started to walk again. After a few seconds of gritting his teeth and holding still, the guy struggled to open his eyes again, but he couldn’t get heavy lids to rise more than a crack this time. After a few increasingly feeble attempts to wake back up and slurred attempts to speak, the fight started to go out of him and he slowly went still, eyes shut, and his head slumped lifelessly against Joey’s shoulder again, breathing weakly and unevenly as he lost consciousness. He was still covered in sweat, but he wasn’t freezing anymore, and that was good at least. Right?

Joey watched him as he moved through the upstairs hallway towards his room, thinking about a lot of things as the sweat-soaked unconscious teenager shuddered feverishly in his arms. “You’ll be fine,” he promised the body quietly, not sure why he was talking to it, but kind of worried about him and feeling better when he did. His room was a little one not far off the main hallway. They’d thrown up some boards and plywood to section off openings between spaces in a couple of the rooms up here and give them a bit more privacy, and his was small, but he liked it. It had a couch and a nice chair and a bunch of his stuff—space to work if he ever had time to fuck around with modifications to knives or masks, or had to repair things. A big window, so decent lighting as far as anywhere in the eternal night went. It didn’t have a door though, jut a big blanket like a curtain, so he couldn’t lock the guy in.

 _No, don’t be ridiculous—that’s not gonna be a problem. How would he run away with his feet tied up? He’d just fall over and go nowhere._ Reassured, Joey carried him over to the couch he used as a bed and laid him down on it. The guy didn’t wake up, but he moaned quietly and winced when Joey set him down, shifting fitfully, and Joey wondered if he should gag him again, just in case. He didn’t really want to, but man it would be so fucking bad if he made too much noise in his sleep. _It wasn’t that loud though,_ he decided slowly, feeling too guilty about before to be willing to gag him again, so he let it slide for now. The guy looked way worse than he had before he’d taken him upstairs, though, and that was pretty worrying. Not as bad as before he’d patched him up or anything, but…

Joey put his hand on his forehead and the survivor groaned and shifted at the touch, but stayed out. He was getting colder again. _Damn it. Please don’t do this. You were finally getting a little better!_ Quickly, Joey got all the blankets he kept up here from off the top of the couch and wrapped the survivor in them, hoping that would help enough. They were some pretty thick quilts, because it could get damn cold here, so all of them together _had_ to be enough to keep him warm, right? After that, he didn’t really know what else he could _do_ though,so he just pulled the big lazy chair a little closer and sat down in it and waited.

It felt strange to do this. And for the first time since deciding to save the survivor if he could, Joey actually had time to sit there and think about all the things he’d just done, but he didn’t really _want_ to. Want to or not, though, he was. There was…there was nothing else _to_ think about now—not really. Every time he tried, his thoughts would just circle back around to it. It felt _so fucking strange_ to be doing this—to be trying to help this guy. _I’m not helping him,_ Joey told himself almost morosely, trying to kick down some agitation and some other unpleasant feelings he hadn’t been able to place just yet, _I just didn’t want him to die. I’m…I’m maintaining stasis. As soon as he can leave, he leaves, and everything goes back to how it was._

…Still though.

It.

It felt good.

He kind of wished it didn’t now, but. It had felt good, fixing somebody. Trying to, anyway. And it was so fucking weird to have done that to somebody he hunted. Would hunt again. But he couldn’t stop— …feeling… …Feeling glad about it. And…

 _…What are you doing?_ Joey asked himself worriedly, eyes fixed on the pale, drawn face on the boy a few feet away as he shifted fretfully every now and again with the little strength he had left, waiting for him to regain consciousness. _And then what? When he actually wakes up again, what are you gonna do?_

He didn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Legion now has two very different and distinctive sets of contradictory lore--the lore given in the initial chapter release for Darkness Among Us, and the lore drop given for Julie's set of Archives. Since the writing for DbD currently dips wildly into retconning and actively contradicting established lore, I tend to stick (with very few but not completely nonexistent exceptions) to the established OG lore for DbD in those cases, since a lot of the OG lore is fascinating and well done and just better than the Archives retcons (haha, and it doesn't help a lot that they leave both versions up on their sites and in-game, so I am sure a lot of players get incredibly confused, and deepest apologies vicariously to new players who don't even know /why/ this is going on). That's definitely the case for how I write the Legion.
> 
> In their OG lore, the Legion is four kids from Ormond, Alberta--late highschool age, except Frank, who is a tad older, so probably the gang members are all 17-20, or /possibly/ 21 for Frank. That's a very intense and uncertain age for a lot of people--for a bunch of us, highschool was kind of the worst of it. There's a lot of self-discovery going on, and it's a pretty vulnerable and changing time. Frank Morrison, the Legion's leader, had been in and out of various foster homes since a very young age, and had a rough time of it, before ending up in Ormond as an almost-adult with permanently drunk and distant foster-father Clive Andrews, whom he hated and wanted to escape, until meeting Julie, a beautiful girl at the highschool who was into him, and deciding to stick around. Julie's best friend was a girl named Susie, and Frank quickly made friends with another boy--Joey--who was young and impressionable and a bit of a showoff--at one of Julie's parties, and the four became a gang. They all had a lot of anger over the world and life in Ormond, and took minor violence and lawbreaking as an outlet, under Frank's guidance--never doing any real /serious/ crimes, but bullying and threatening other students, shoplifting and committing acts of vandalism around town while masked, stuff like that. They set up shop in a local abandoned ski lodge on the mountain as their gang hideout, and were mostly a somewhat worrying very close-knit bunch punk teens blowing off steam in the not most healthy of ways, until their last night on earth. That last night, the four broke into a local store. Joey had just been fired from that job--he felt extremely unfairly--and so the gang had decided to rob it once it closed as a little bit of venting payback. A cleaner working late who wasn't supposed to be there was still in the store when they broke in, saw masked people stealing stuff, and snuck up behind Julie and grabbed her. Frank heard her trying to call for help through a hand over her mouth, and in a moment of impulsive rage, came to her rescue by stabbing the man in the back.   
> Realizing what had happened and afraid to be alone in that or turned on, Frank ordered the other three to finish what he'd started. Joey forced himself to take the knife and stab the guy in the ribs. Susie refused point blank to do it, even with Frank shouting at her. Julie shut her eyes and stabbed the man in the chest. Susie still refused, so Julie, her best friend, gave her the knife, and while she was distracted being horrified her best friend would ask her to do this, Frank grabbed her hands and made her stab him in the throat. After, Frank got the panicked teens to try to quickly mop up the blood and hide evidence; they got the body into the trunk of Joey's car and took it up to the mountain by the lodge to bury, and started digging a grave. Frank thought he saw something in the woods nearby, and afraid it was a passerby who'd seen them burying a corpse, took off to stop them, and didn't come back. After a little, the other three went to find him, and none of the four were ever seen again.
> 
> This history has always made The Legion one of the most interesting sets of killers in DbD to me, because they are quite literally a bunch of kids in over their heads. Obviously murdering anyone is horribly, but there's a lot more room to come back from that kind of thing done once, unplanned, than most other situations. Unfortunately, there's also the real chance of going down a dark path and never coming back. Which all leaves the whole set of Legion members with a bunch of character potential. It's especially interesting to me they never even would have really had time to adjust to/process having done the first murder, grabbed immediately after by the Entity like that. Very interesting indeed.
> 
> Hey! Thanks for reading chapter two! Joey's always been a really fun POV for me, haha, so it was nice to get into it again. Thanks so much for the comments and kudos--it means a lot to know people are enjoying this. : ) Hope you like this one too. <3


	3. Exchanging Names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin wakes up to a situation he absolutely did not expect to be in.

_…what did…? …I…f-fuck…I’m…hurt. …Dying? …is…this a…trial? …and. …n…No…I…was…we…Dwight!_

Quentin snapped awake with a start, tried to shoot up, and failed. A sharp pain ripped through him, traveling along his back from his abdomen to his shoulders, and it was so agonizing he almost doubled over again completely and could barely stifle his cry. His arms weren’t working—they hadn’t moved to prop him up when he’d tried to catch himse— _fuck—what? No._ Fuck. Fuck. What was going on? He couldn’t move right. Something was really, really wrong. It was dark where he was, and he didn’t recognize it, but it was a room somewhere, and he was laying on his side. His body ached, and his gut was a mass of pain, but he couldn’t remember what had happened at all. Just that Dwight had been shot, and—

It came back with a flash, in fragments and out of order, but close enough, and Quentin registered the reason his arms weren’t working was that they were tied together and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach and fear bury him in a massive wave like a rolling mountain of water plunging a ship under in the middle of a storm. He had been tied up in the realm before. _No. No fucking way._

Knowing it had never been more needed, his adrenaline kicked on with a fury, and he frantically started to struggle to get up, mind still playing catch-up on where it was, and sending him out of order, distorted visuals and audio of the Deathslinger, and the Shape, and the Legion. _When_ had—

“It’s okay.”

Quentin’s head snapped over to look for the sound, and he registered for the first time that he wasn’t in the room alone. He didn’t know how he’d ever missed it. There was a chair, _directly_ across from where he was, only maybe four feet away, and there was a person in it. His vision had come on kind of distorted and blurry, like his eyes suddenly didn’t have the energy to focus right, but he still recognized the Legion easily, and he remembered being kicked, and for a second he froze on instinct at the realization it was here, in the room with him, and just stared at it in horror, breathing raggedly fast and trying desperately to think things through while lost to the horror of very fresh memories of how it had felt to bleed out and die on that floor. Frantically confused by how the fuck he was still alive at all.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” promised the Legion, holding up a hand. It was one of the boys—the third one Quentin had seen initially. The one with the skull mask. Quentin stayed frozen, propped half-up on a shoulder, which was painful, but he couldn’t get his body to sit the rest of the way up, and he wasn’t willing to lie down with that thing five feet away and himself bound and trapped with it.

 _Wait, what?_ thought Quentin then, actually registering what it had said several seconds after the words were out. He was…there were other memories. He wasn’t sure if they were real or not. This guy. Himself. Somewhere—not here—but he’d…fuck—he couldn’t remember what the guy had said. Just that he’d…something about…hiding? _Did that happen? I…_ It—it was feverish, like a dream—maybe it hadn’t happened at all. But what _had_?

He kept still, looking back over at the Legion, and trying to think through his options in bullet time, but the universe was not being merciful and slowing down to help him. Everything felt so wrong and overwhelming, and he was wary and confused and sick. It was hard to…even breathe right. Quentin was in _so much pain_ , he just wanted it to stop. It was almost more than he could bear, and it was making it so hard to think at all, and he—

The Legion stood up. Alarmed and caught off guard, Quentin jolted painfully backwards against the thing he was only registering on a delay was a couch, trying to keep away from it. There was barely anywhere to _go,_ though. He couldn’t get up, he couldn’t even _back up_ , couldn’t defend himself at all, and so with nothing else he could do, he pressed himself as far back against the couch as he could and kept his eyes fixed on the menacing figure with the knife while breathing raggedly and wanting to vomit, thoughts still fragmented, painful splinters in his head. It saw him draw back, and stopped, though. For a second it hesitated there on its feet, looking at him, and then it held up a hand and sat slowly down again, and stayed there. Very slowly, Quentin let himself relax a little, confused and surprised, but relieved.

“I’m not,” said the Legion again, still watching him carefully. It sounded like it hoped he would believe it.

Quentin looked down at his bound wrists, then back up at the thing.

“I told you,” it said, “I can’t just let you run around either. You might try to steal our shit.”

 _You did?_ Had he actually talked to it, then? When…? Quentin looked, but all he got were distorted chunks of _something_ in his memory. He thought he’d been…gagged? He… Quentin reached up and felt, but there was nothing covering his mouth now. It did sting a little though, like something had made the skin raw. _Oh shit, that was real,_ he thought, eyes widening and trying frantically to reclaim memories that were partially deteriorated. What happened? Why had it—

“If you can stay quiet, I won’t have to gag you again,” offered the Legion, trying to guess what he was thinking.

That was kind of a horrifying sentence to hear though, and Quentin looked over at it with an expression that definitely reflected that, and it reacted like it was…surprised? By the look?

“You can’t get heard,” it said almost defensively, “If one of the others hears you, they’ll probably kill you, so you need to stay quiet, and stay hidden.”

 _Oh. …Wait. Is that…?_ That felt…familiar. Like he’d heard it before. He blinked, trying hard to remember. He was still only getting fragments, and it wasn’t enough. _The ‘others’? But. The rest of Legion?_

Quentin looked back up at it. “…The rest of Legion doesn’t know I’m here?” His voice sounded scratchy and rough to him. Not like it was supposed to. _Shit, I did almost die, didn’t I?_ he realized in slow-building horror, _How am I not dead? _He looked down at himself, and couldn’t see much, because there were blankets over him. _What the…hell did…?_

“No,” said the Legion, whom he’d forgotten to wait for an answer from, “And you need to keep it that way. They wouldn’t be so lenient with you.”

He had only half-heard that, because he’d realized that beneath the blankets, his shirt was gone. Trying to go as fast as he could, Quentin got the blankets off his shoulders with his bound hands and a little effort, and stared in surprise at his torso. There were bandages there, in white and blue cloth, and some of the same around his left arm where it had been cut too. _No…way._

Slowly, he turned and gaped at the Legion again. For the first time since waking up, his panicked heartrate slowed down a little as he started to put information into place.

“…You. _You_ did this?” he asked. Not sure what else to say, and kind of overwhelmingly lost.

The guy opposite him nodded. Quentin couldn’t really see him at all—he could never see _any_ of the Legion, but you could see more of this guy than the other three. The eye holes in his mask were bigger—big enough you could get at least a little bit of an expression from them. The dark brown eyes in shadow there were watching him carefully now, but all he could see in them was maybe a little bit of interest.

“I…why?” asked Quentin before he had a chance to think better of that. He felt. Fuck, he was _so_ lost.

_You did kick me to death, right? Or. To almost-death. So…why? Why. It…_

Somehow that wasn’t even the biggest thing, either, although it probably should have been. Never in a million years would he have expected one of the killers here— _any_ of the killers here—to show even an _ounce_ of mercy. Except maybe the Nurse, but… But like _this_? This kind of a _big_ way? Especially after the way the night had been going? _I should be dead. I don’t understand. Why am I not? Why would. …Why would one of them save me?_

The Legion seemed kind of surprised again. “Because. You didn’t trespass.”

“What?” said Quentin, totally lost.

The Legion pointed at his torso, and Quentin looked down at the bandaged wound. “Somebody else chased you here when you were outta options, and expected us to finish the job _for_ them. I don’t do other people’s dirty work. If you came here for fun, like, to break or steal our shit, then I’d fuck you up, but it’s whoever chased you that fucked with our territory, not you. So, you get a pass.”

 _What?_ Quentin had so little idea how to respond to that with the highly downgraded speed neurons were currently firing at inside his damaged head that he just stared at him.

“I kicked you because I didn’t know,” said the Legion defensively, misreading the silence, “—Why you were here _or_ that you were hurt already. But I’m not gonna just finish you off for somebody who wasn’t good enough to get a fight done on their own.”

“…Then…you’ll let me go?” asked Quentin after a second, almost beginning to hope.

The Legion nodded, and Quentin wanted to pass out with the strength of the relief that answer hit him with.

“C-can I go, then?” he asked hopefully.

The Legion shook his head. “Not right now.”

“But—” started Quentin, heart sinking.

“Not I wouldn’t let you, but you literally _can’t,_ ” hurried the Legion, seeing the look on his face, “We aren’t by the survivors.”

 _Oh. Fuck._ That clicked too. Legion was right. The woods had just shifted—that’s how he’d gotten _into_ this mess. Still, though. “I could try—” started Quentin, but Legion was already shaking his head.

“Bad idea. _Real_ bad idea. Cowboy,” said Legion, pointing over off behind his back, “Shape,” he said, pointing to his right, “Demogorgon,” he said, pointing past Quentin, and then finally off to the left, “Nightmare.”

_Fuck._

Quentin looked at the ground, shoulders slumping a little. Legion was right, then. Those weren’t ones Quentin would have had decent odds sneaking past on a good day. Like this? And fuck it—even at full strength, he’d sooner let the Legion gut him than try to make it through Badham. Besides, even if he did by some miracle make it through Haddonfield, or the lab—and those were not very good ‘if’s, because the Demogorgon could hear a footstep like a shark could smell a drop of blood, and the Shape just seemed able to literally _sense_ if someone was nearby—then he’d still have absolutely no guarantee that the far side of that realm was any closer to the campfire than he was already. He had absolutely no clue what the layout had changed to this time, and no way of knowing if _any_ direction he tried out would be taking him closer to home, or farther away. Might make it miraculously past the Shape in one piece just to see the Trapper or the Spirit waiting, and nowhere left to run.

“You can stay though,” offered Legion after a second, almost sounding like he felt bad for him, “I don’t know when the woods will get us next to you again, but so long as you stay here in this room and keep quiet, the others won’t know you’re here, and you can wait it out.”

Quentin kept his eyes on the ground, thinking, trying to find some other way out of this. He couldn’t find one though. Finally, he looked up at Legion again. The guy was still studying him carefully like he had been before.

“Because the others would kill me?” he asked hesitantly.

The Legion thought for a second, then nodded.

“…But you didn’t want to?” asked Quentin, still very confused on this point.

The Legion looked almost attacked by that, like it had been an accusation against his character. _Shit—I didn’t—_ “No. I don’t finish other people’s work,” said the Legion defensively, bordering on annoyed or a little angry, “And I’m not scared of you. The others would be careful about you, just in case, but you’re not tough enough to be a threat.”

 _Huh. He’s…defensive, about helping me. Because he thinks it’s…weak, I think?_ Which meant he’d done it because he felt like it was the right thing to do, right? Not because of…pride too strong to finish someone else’s kill off, or whatever he kept suggesting his motivation had been. _I didn’t think any of the killers…had a…shred of decency in them at all, but..._ Slowly, Quentin looked back up and smiled. Which the Legion looked more surprised by than anything else he’d done by a long shot. “Thank you,” offered Quentin sincerely, meeting his gaze and feeling a little guilty it had taken him this long to think to say it. He felt like shit, and he knew he sounded like it, but he hoped the guy could tell he meant it.

The Legion just gaped at him, taken aback.

“For saving my life,” said Quentin.

Quickly, the Legion looked away from him then, and there was something about his expression that was almost frantic, like he had less than no idea how to answer that. Quentin smiled again, feeling a little better seeing him do that. It was way more of a human reaction than he ever would have expected. He’d arrived in the realm with Krueger, and he’d assumed—rightly, as far as he had ever been able to tell—that the other monsters here were as unlikely to give a shit or show an ounce of mercy as that monster would have been. Because of that, he’d never tried to get through to any of them. There had been a lot of times he had seen _other_ survivors try though—hell, Dwight had tried only a few hours ago with the Deathslinger. But. It had… _always_ ended about like it had for him and Dwight. Nobody showed mercy. Nothing here cared. It had never even seemed like pleading had an effect at all on the killers, not even enough to make them just hesitate for an instant, or look a little sorry, or even just fucking think about it for a _second_ before deciding to continue ripping them to shreds. It was all just awful, and inhuman, and unforgiving, and that was how every single one of them had _always_ been. But. Somehow against all odds, he was wrong. Because this one must have a little bit of a soul left after all.

“Really,” said Quentin, meaning it, “I’m grateful. I…should be dead right now. Thank you.”

The Legion cleared his throat and glanced at Quentin for a second, then away again. “Sure. It wasn’t a gift. Like I said, I don’t do other people’s dirty work. …But, sure.”

“What’s your name?” asked Quentin, trying to adjust and sit up a little to see him better. Moving was extremely painful and kind of a bad idea though, so he gave up and settled for just a little propped up on an arm.

“I’m not telling you that,” said the guy, like he was offended Quentin would think he was dumb enough to answer.

“Why?” asked Quentin genuinely, “What would I do with it?”

Only the Legion’s eyes were visible past the mask, but even with just that, it was pretty clear the guy had no idea how to answer. After two seconds of awkward silence, he just made a kind of scoffing sound clearing his throat and said, “You’re a survivor. I’m not supposed to.”

“Would you get in trouble?” asked Quentin, confused.

The guy didn’t answer, just looked at him, then finally and a little abrasively said, “Look, I’m not gonna tell you. Quit asking.”

“Okay,” said Quentin, backing off, not sure why the name was such a big deal, but still mostly just happy to be alive and in a relatively okay place right now. “Well. I’m Quentin.” He smiled at the Legion, and the guy under the mask looked incredibly taken off guard again by that. “Uhm. If you don’t want me to know your name, I don’t know what to call you, except ‘Legion,’ I guess. Is that okay?”

Legion gave a nod, seeming almost stressed by this reaction.

“Am I, uh…” Quentin glanced down at what he could see of himself, and the bandages there. It was _freezing_ cold in here with the blanket off his shoulders, and he wanted to put it back on, but also somehow felt like that would be embarrassing or something. Stupid maybe. _At least you’re alive._ God, he felt like shit though. He felt kind of lightheaded and out of it, which was probably a blessing, because his stomach ached and was sending sharp stabs of pain up his torso whenever he moved, and he had a feeling that whenever he started to get any _less_ out of it, that pain was only going to get worse. The arm wasn’t as bad at least, but it hurt incessantly too. He was so fucking cold. How was he _this_ cold? Blood loss? _God, I feel really weak. How much blood did I lose?_ Probably a lot, if he was laying down, mostly holding still, _and_ feeling dizzy at the same time. He had no idea what his back looked like, but the bandage on his stomach hadn’t bled through, so that was something though. Actually, it was kind of surprising it _hadn’t_ bled through, considering. “…dying?” he finished the sentence finally, glancing back at Legion, and feeling kind of silly after he’d said it. He had no idea though—he really didn’t. He was awake and talking and thinking okay right now, but he’d thought that he _had_ died, when he passed out. And he’d been _really_ fucked up from taking that harpoon bolt.

“D-do you feel like you are?” asked Legion, taken aback and almost sounding worried.

“…N. No, I don’t think so,” said Quentin haltingly, “I just. I was—I was pretty bad off.” The Legion seemed…relieved to hear that. _This is surreal._ He glanced down at the bandages and then back up at Legion again. “Uhm. H-how did you-?”

Legion shrugged. “I sewed your cuts shut. Unless you’re bleeding internally, you should be okay.”

 _Bleeding internally?_ Oh yeah. Fuck. Deathslinger. Rod right through the torso. That was a real strong possibility. _Man, I hope I self-healed—_ Wait, no, God, what he hoped was that he’d been using his healing aura when Dwight was still with him! Fuck. Fuck! Dwight. The aura was an ability he had strongly in trials, and weaker but still to some extent outside of them—everybody had skills they’d gained in the realm somehow: Dwight could see his friends’ auras even at pretty decent distances, Jane could heal some of her own wounds by bandaging someone else, like a superpower, Laurie could see killer auras, Claudette could see allies that were hurt—could even tell what their wounds were usually to some extent, if they were in her range—and one of the things that Quentin himself had gained in the realm was an ability he that let him passively heal people if they were physically close enough to him—not heal _everything_ , or even close to it, but it _did_ fix the really bad stuff. Extreme exhaustion, broken bones, hemorrhaging that wouldn’t stop, internal bleeding, organ failure—the kind of stuff that was life threatening and had to fixed _fast._ It would do jack shit for cuts and gashes and nasty bruises, which sucked, but it would keep you alive and save you from the thing that should have made you bleed out in seconds, so it was still a pretty invaluable skill to him. And honestly, it was probably the best thing he had to offer his friends out here. The only problem with the ability was that he didn’t always have the best control over that skill, _especially_ outside trials. He’d lost his ability to do it anymore at all once, actually, for…God, a long, long time here in the realm. It had only been a few months back he’d gotten it again. B-but surely, _surely_ Dwight had been with him long enough for it to have done something— _God, please._ _Please, please let me have been doing that when Dwight was there. Please. If one of us dies of internal bleeding, please let it be me. Please let him be okay._

“…Do you feel like you are?”

Quentin glanced up, and Legion was watching him with what really almost looked like concern again—genuine concern. He had almost _sounded_ concerned too. And God, that was _so_ weird from a killer. I mean. A **killer** _. I’ve been murdered by you,_ thought Quentin, kind of stuck on that and lost to the reality of that one thought as he looked back at the other guy, _Do you actually care if I die here forever now?_

“Bleeding internally?” prompted Legion nervously.

“…Uh, no,” answered Quentin after a moment, having a hard time thinking that through over the confusion of being spoken to like this by a killer at all, “I think I’d be…dead already. If I was. Or. Much worse off. And in even more pain.”

“Oh,” said the Legion, sounding like he was trying to _not_ sound relieved. He relaxed back a little into his seat and glanced over at Quentin again. “What happened to you, anyway? You had a hole through your stomach.”

“Yeah, uh, I got shot,” said Quentin slowly, “With something kind of like a harpoon gun.”

“A what?” asked Legion, leaning forward again in disbelief, “—I know what a harpoon gun is,” he added, holding up a hand, “But who the fuck here has a harpoon gun?”

“The…newest killer—the Deathslinger,” said Quentin.

“The cowboy?” asked Legion.

Quentin nodded. “He’s got a modified rifle. It shoots uh…” He started to make a vague gesture to try to indicate size, and then realized he couldn’t, because his hands were bound. “Barbs.”

“Why?” said Legion, “Why not just a gun?”

Quentin shrugged. “I guess so he can catch people, instead of just kill us. The harpoons are all on chains. They go through you, and the tip pops open and digs into the far side of what it went through, and he’ll reel you in. Like-”

“-Like a fishing pole?” asked Legion, looking and sounding horrified.

“Yeah,” said Quentin, feeling some kind of way about Legion being horrified by this information. It was almost funny, in a nice way. He heard Legion whisper _“Jesus,”_ under his breath, thinking about that.

“How did he get you?” asked the Legion, “Why were you in his home?”

“It was an accident,” said Quentin, glancing away, “A friend and I were just seeing what realms were on the border for us, and a bank we were on gave, and m—I uh. I ended up in there on accident. Then the realms swapped before I could get back out, and there was suddenly no campfire to go back to, just killer realms in every direction. So.”

“So you came here,” said Legion.

Quentin nodded.

“That’s a lot of bad luck,” observed Legion.

“Well,” said Quentin, considering and then glancing over at him again with a little bit of a smile, “some of it was good, I guess.”

Legion glanced away.

 _This is not at all how I thought any of you would be, _thought Quentin. It was nice. It was a fucking relief is what it was. “Thanks for patching me up,” he offered.

Legion glanced back at him. “…I mean. I _did_ cause some of that damage.”

“Well, to be fair, I was pretty fucked up before,” said Quentin, “I think I was already about to pass out.” He thought for a second and let out a breath and added, “…Sewing up my back blind would not have been fun. I am _really_ glad I didn’t have to do it.”

For a moment, Legion just studied him, then he shifted forward in the chair a little. “Welcome.”

He hadn’t said that before. And there was something in his voice that made Quentin almost think he’d smiled.

“Sorry I kicked you,” added Legion kind of awkwardly after a second, “I didn’t know. And I was, uh. Pissed off. And groggy, because I’d been asleep. Fucking gunshot woke me up.”

Quentin smiled at him. “Yeah, I wasn’t a big fan of that one either.”

The Legion snorted. “I bet.”

That had been close to a real laugh—been close to friendly, or causal. It was nearly enough to make Quentin feel _relaxed_ here, if that were possible. God, it was hard to feel anything too well through the nausea and lightheadedness though.

“You should be okay here,” said Legion reassuringly, changing subjects and leaning more comfortably against one of the chair arms, “till the realms shift. But you _are_ gonna have to be careful. Especially if we don’t get campfire on the next rotation either.”

 _Oh yeah. Fuck. It could really be a while._ What about the others? All his friends back at the campfire? What would happen? _God—they’re all gonna think I’m dead. _And fuck, he didn’t want to wait a month to know if Dwight was okay—he didn’t think he _could_. There had to be a—

“I don’t guess you have some faster way,” asked Legion, seeing the look on his face, “Like the hatch or something?”

“Well,” said Quentin, considering that slowly, “Uhm. Theoretically, I guess maybe, but—”

“Wait, really?” asked Legion excitedly.

“Well—maybe,” said Quentin again unsurely, “Hatches can take you to wherever, and the tunnels always seem to be there, so there _might_ be a way, but I really don’t know how to do it if there is one. I wish I did. Logically, there should be a way, I think—the hatch _should_ be able to open from either direction. So, I guess there probably is, and you could use them in reverse. But, I don’t think I could get it to work here in Ormond, cause I don’t have the first idea how—I wouldn’t even know where to start trying to get the hatch to appear outside of a trial. Usually in _those_ I still need a map just to find it in the first place, and even if I could find it, I don’t have a key to open it with, so.”

“—No, but that’s easy!” said Legion enthusiastically, leaning forward, “I could get all of that for you! I mean, maybe it’ll be a couple days to get both, a week tops, but I can get a map and a key!—First time I see a survivor packing one in a trial, I can just chase them down and kill them and bring it—”

“—No!” Quentin cut him off desperately, gaping in horror, “No—Oh my God! Please! Don’t kill one of my friends for a key! Please!”

Legion stopped and looked up at him in surprise.

His response to hearing Legion say that had been impulsive, but the complete lack of _anything_ but surprise at his response on Legion’s face crashed into Quentin like a semi-truck and everything went slow and distorted and still and wrong all around him as it sunk in for real what Legion had just said—how casually he’d just said it—everything.

 _What is wrong with you,_ Quentin asked himself, suddenly overwhelmingly sick, _How fucking selfish can you be? Even if he did help you to be nice, just on a whim, were you really going to act like that makes all the other shit he does to people okay? What, because he was nice to **you** one time? Fuck! What the hell are you thinking—what have I been doing? Did I forget? Am I so out of it I’ve actually been chatting like old friends with a fucking killer? _

With the thoughts came clearer context of life _before_ waking up in this room, _experience_ before waking up in this room. And he was buried beneath it. All the kind of almost okay feelings that had settled on him with the relief he’d felt when the Legion had promised things weren’t at all as bad as he’d thought vanished to reality like warmth sucked away by a sudden frozen downpour. He wanted to vomit.

_Jesus, I have no idea what’s happening to me. I’ve just been believing everything he said. I have **no idea** what he actually wants, or why he did this. All I actually know is that I’m injured, and tied up, and alone, in Ormond, with the killer who found me. No one knows where I am. I can’t run. I can barely fight back if anything happens. Fuck, he could have had **so** many reasons for keeping me alive. Why did I think he meant this? He’s a serial killer—I’ve **died** under his knife before, gutted and screaming, and it’s horrific. I’ve seen him do that to my friends. To Laurie, and Dwight, and Jake— **fuck.** Fuck—why did you trust him? Are you stupid? Do you really think someone whose first impulse is to go gut Feng for a key without a second thought is somebody who was really going to **help** you? What—because it’s the right thing to do? Do you think he gives a single fuck what the right thing to do is? _

There was overwhelming guilt with the thoughts, guilt at being stupid, guilt at being friendly, guilt at failing to stop himself from ending up here, guilt at everything. But there was also fear. God, there was suddenly so much fear, and hopelessness, and such complete isolation. Flung back into that awful feeling he’d woken with, like he was trapped alone out in the middle of the sea in a storm with nothing but big black empty waves crashing down and an angry sky in any direction towards the horizon. Just. Just no chance against those kinds of odds. Too small, too broken, and weary, against something too powerful. No chance to make it out. He was looking at the Legion now and seeing the way it looked to him in memories, memories of trials where he’d been flung up on a hook, or cut down, knocked to the ground and cut open screaming. It had been a long time since Quentin had felt this powerless, a really, really long time, and with that realization and the memories of the last time he had felt this came so much more fear, and for a second he just froze up and couldn’t have moved even if he’d had the strength and freedom to do it, locked up by the way that horror felt, and aware he was frozen, and unable to break through it. No idea how to protect himself, how to do anything, and very, very scared.

Legion was seeing the way he was looking at it now, and the expression on his face, and it shifted in the chair a little. “Look. It’s not a big deal,” tried Legion with some bravado, “I mean, they’d come back.”

All Quentin could do was look at him. He could feel his heart sinking, feel the dizziness and the pounding in his head getting worse, the nausea getting worse, and he didn’t even care. It was so much. His ability to move came back, but he was so fucking weak, and bound, and stuck that it almost didn’t even matter that he’d beaten the PTSD and gotten motion back, and that? _That_ broke him.

“What?” said Legion defensively, almost snapping at him, “You’re gonna be pissed at me for saying that?”

“…Please. Don’t kill anyone,” managed Quentin quietly, not really looking at its face anymore.

“You’re really gonna get like this?” asked Legion, close to incensed itself now, “You know, you’re not really in a position to get all high and mighty with me.”

It stood up, and Quentin looked up at it then, in fear, very aware of how little he would be able to run or to fight.

“I helped you!” snapped Legion. It stepped forward, and Quentin tried to move back, but there was only an inch back into the couch to _go._ He wasn’t sure if it had drawn its knife when it stood, or sometime before that, or if it had been holding it the whole time and he just hadn’t seen, but it was holding it now, and every time it gestured, the blade sparkled and caught moonlight from the window on the far left side of the room past Quentin’s feet. “I have been _way_ nicer than I had to be, and I saved your life,” continued Legion angrily, pointing the knife at him, “And you’re gonna be _pissed_ with me? For offering to help in a way you don’t like? You should be on your knees, thanking me, because you’re not dead right now! And you could be, you _really easily_ could be!”

For a moment, Quentin just looked up at him in the cold moonlight, feeling sick, and alone. Feeling the anger radiating off the person waiting for his answer, and feeling anger himself now too, along with everything else. _On my knees?_ God, it had been so stupid to believe any of this had just been…altruistic. Of course it wouldn’t be. It never would be. Not here, not with someone like one of them. And not for him. Probably never for him. That just wasn’t how things went in his life. He knew that. He should have known that.

“…So, what?” Quentin offered hopelessly, making himself look up into Legion’s eyes again, and knowing this might just provoke a stab wound, but no idea what else he could make himself say, “You’re only going to keep me alive if I grovel for you and thank you and heap on a bunch of praise? Is that why you did this? To get me to make you feel good about yourself?”

Taken aback for a second, the Legion started to say something, and then stopped. So Quentin kept going.

“ _You_ almost killed me, because you were mad, and I was there, and to you, that justifies ending my life,” said Quentin, “And I guess also because you’re a serial killer, and that’s just what you do. Or enjoy, or something. And I _am_ grateful that you didn’t; it isn’t fair for me to have to be grateful for that, but I am. I am _grateful_ I’m still alive. I guess you’ve killed me and everybody I love so many times before, that what you did for me here, deciding to _stop_ murdering me before you were completely finished, is nice to you. And if the reason you did that is because you want me to pretend that you not murdering me one time is something I’m gonna worship you for? Then okay. I’ll do it. I’ll do that if that’s what it takes for me to get to go back to my friends again and live long enough to be able to help them suffer less the little bit I can in this fucking awful place, instead of die here. Is that what you want from me? Is that what you want me to do?”

For a second, the Legion just stared at him, then it made a sound like it was going to say something, stopped again, then lowered the hand with the knife a little and finally just said, “…That’s…”

It didn’t finish the thought. It just looked away.

So did Quentin. Thinking, about the knife, and the anger, and being grabbed and thrown against the ground, and the way having that knife pressed to his throat had felt.

“…Legion,” said Quentin finally, very quiet, looking back up at the thing with the knife and feeling more sick and unsteady and much worse than even a few seconds ago, which he hadn’t thought was possible. It glanced back at him at the sound of its name. “Please,” said Quentin hopelessly, feeling broken and dead trying to meet and hold the killer’s gaze like that might be able to provoke some tiny increment of anything human in it, “If you patched me up so I would live a little longer, and you could have some fun slowly taking me apart out here before I die, at least have the decency not to pretend you’re going to let me go.” He felt so fucking hopeless and alone saying that, but he was starting to be really afraid that it would be true. It…honestly made more sense than any alternative he could see. “Please. It’s not gonna matter,” he whispered, holding the thing’s gaze and feeling his eyes mist up and trying to fight that back, “I’m too weak to run away, and tied up. The only reason to lie about it would be to be cruel, and I- …I just. …please. I. …please don’t. please just tell me. If you’re gonna do that to me, isn’t that enough on its own?”

The Legion stared back at him in silence, frozen. When it finally spoke, it sounded horrified. And. Almost maybe hurt. “…Do you really think that’s why I saved you?”

Quentin didn’t really know how to answer, so he just feebly gave a hopeless shrug as best he could, too weak and sick to really do anything but lay still on his side. God, what a hopeless, bottoming-out fear that was to feel. It was almost enough to make his brain just want to shut down.

“…You must _really_ hate me,” said the Legion finally, quiet, shoulders slumping a little. It didn’t sound mad anymore, just…lost, maybe. Quentin was so tired, he didn’t even really have a guess what that meant. _At least he…he’s not. …Mad at you. …Right now, anymore…Maybe he won’t kill you…tonight…_

“I don’t know,” answered Quentin honestly, feeling like he was about to either pass out, or throw up, and not sure which, “I hate things you’ve done, to people I love, to me. But I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you, or why you do them. If you care, at all. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m…terrified…of you.”

Legion glanced at him for a moment when he said that, its eyes big behind the mask, and then it looked away, at the floor. It sheathed its knife and glanced at him again then and cleared its throat. “…I uh. I’m sorry. That I blew up at you—I shouldn’t have said any of that. -I didn’t- I wasn’t gonna hurt you.” He glanced at Quentin like he was trying to tell if he might believe that. “I was just. …I don’t know. I don’t know why I did.” He looked away at the ground for a second, then back at Quentin and cleared his throat again. When he spoke, he sounded like he was working really hard to sound sincere. “I’m not gonna hurt you, though, okay? I promise. I won’t. You’re safe while you have to stay here. I told you I would let you go as soon as there’s a way for you to get back, and I will. I’m not…pretending to help you, and I’m not gonna torture you or something—I mean it. If you don’t want me to. …change how I do trials, I’ll just do them normally, and you can wait for the realms to change. Okay?”

“…Okay,” said Quentin quietly, trying to absorb that and not really sure what to say to it at all. Or to think of it. He wanted to believe him, but he was afraid to, because he’d wanted to last time.

The Legion nodded, and then went and sat back down in his chair opposite Quentin. “…I’m not that scary,” he offered kind of hopelessly after a couple seconds of silence.

Quentin _really_ didn’t know how to respond to that.

When he didn’t, the Legion kind of hunched over forward and looked despondently at the floor.

_I think I’m gonna…pass out again. …Shit…_

He was trying to think, trying to figure out what to do, but it was so fucking hard. His body felt _so_ awful.

“I terrify you?” asked Legion like he hoped it wasn’t true, looking up at him again.

“…Right now,” said Quentin, overcome with exhaustion and struggling to keep himself awake because consciousness was the only little bit of a defense he still _had._

“Right now?” echoed Legion, surprised.

“Especially right now,” corrected Quentin. It was getting so hard to keep his eyes open. _No. Come on. Don’t do this. Please, please stay awake. Don’t leave me alone._

“But I-” started Legion, and it hesitated, then tried almost desperately, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Why?” said Quentin.

“Why?” echoed Legion, distressed by the question.

“I don’t…know why you wouldn’t,” managed Quentin. Talking was getting harder too.

He had expected Legion to keep asking him things, but it thought about that one for a long couple of seconds instead, fidgeting, until he started to hope it _would_ say something, because it was getting so impossibly painful to fight himself and stay awake, and _anything_ that would help that struggle would have been welcome.

“I’m sorry I said that stupid shit to you,” offered Legion finally, looking up again, “I didn’t mean it. I just. –I said one thing wrong, and you hated me, and I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking.”

“I don’t hate you,” said Quentin, starting to drift a little and only still mostly conscious despite all his desperate work. He felt so awful and tired and it was hard to think. The strongest sensation left was the stabbing in his gut that worsened in bursts and ran up his back and chest until it was almost unbearable, before fading for a moment of relief and beginning again, and he was scared, and Legion sounded sad, and it was all _so_ much to…figure out…he…he was so tired of being scared. He hated being scared. He was so tired. He was so tired… “I don’t. …know you. I’m just. …scared. of you.”

“I’m not trying to scare you—I don’t want to hurt you,” tried Legion kind of desperately again, “You’ll be safe here.”

“I’m never safe,” whispered Quentin, finally losing his struggle and shutting his eyes.

“I just want to help,” came Legion’s voice, “Why won’t you believe me?”

With immense effort, Quentin made himself open his eyes again. It was hard to remember exactly where he was. He was so tired. He could barely make out Legion’s eyes behind the mask though, fixed on him. _Why don’t…I…? …Oh._ Quentin shook his head weakly at the killer. “No one ever does. Not for me.” He let his eyes shut again and mumbled, “I don’t know…why…”

“No one?” echoed Legion.

“Not like this,” Quentin managed, voice a little slurred and his eyes still shut. … _That’s…right. …It doesn’t. It’s always…bad. …Usually I…_

“…Would it help if I told you my name?” came the Legion’s voice miserably.

Digging deep, Quentin managed to open his eyes again, breathing weakly from the effort and exhaustion, and he looked over at the masked guy across from him.

“I’m sorry,” offered Legion hopelessly, holding his gaze, “I’ll keep you safe.”

It stood up then, and walked over, and a little panicked in his half-conscious state by that, Quentin’s breathing sped up and he tried to pull away and couldn’t, because there was nowhere left to go. The Legion held up a hand as it came, though, and kept it up as it reached him and looked down at his expression and the way he was braced and shuddering a little.

“You should go back to sleep. I think you need it,” said Legion calmingly, and it very carefully reached over with the hand it didn’t have up and pulled the blankets Quentin had moved down back over his shoulder, and he was immediately infinitely warmer again beneath them. “I’m just gonna go sit over there, maybe get some sleep too,” continued Legion, pointing back at the easy chair, “Okay? You’re gonna be fine.”

Quentin just kept staring back up at him, lost in how to respond.

“My name is Joey,” added Legion, gesturing at his own chest with the introduction.

“…Joey?” said Quentin.

Joey nodded.

“…Thank you…” offered Quentin, starting to shut his eyes again pretty dangerously close to going from half-conscious to unconscious any second now, “…and…I’m sorry.”

“What for?” came Joey’s voice in confusion.

“I…you were…nice…and I…made you s…sad,” managed Quentin, eyes still shut.

“No you didn’t,” said Joey reassuringly, “I was mean, and I made myself sad. Just get some rest, okay. Quentin?”

He’d added the name as an afterthought, like he was trying it out carefully, or afraid he’d misremembered or something, or was unsure if he should say it. It had been nice to hear, though. It was reassuring. Names went with people, and he’d been a little afraid Joey had been avoiding using it because he didn’t want to think of him as one—because that would make him harder to just kill. He’d used it now, though, so. Maybe he wouldn’t. After all.

“Okay,” answered Quentin in a whisper, feeling a lot better as he started to lose consciousness for real. “…Joey. …Goodnight…”

For a long couple of minutes after Quentin passed out, Joey stood there, watching him, before going back to the chair and sitting down. He had a lot to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin's fear about Joey not wanting to use his name is a pretty merited one. Historically, most atrocities people commit towards eachother begin with dehumanization. For some people that would mean viewing other groups as othered, for some people viewing every single person on the planet as less human than them, but across the board, it's the overlapping theme for people who do things that most human beings would consider unacceptable behavior and a horrible thing to do--like you know, murder, or torture. It isn't uncommon for serial killers to actively try to avoid viewing their victims as human, which is why people often release things like pleas from the family, along with baby and childhood pictures, when trying to locate someone who has been kidnapped; it's an attempt to get whoever took them to view them as human if they see it, and thus make it harder for them to kill them. Names are definitely a thing that fall under this category, as are any personal details, like family, or pets, or things you love. A lot easier to pull the trigger on someone who is just a face than it is to pull the trigger on someone you know cries every time they watch the end of Homeward Bound and takes extra whipped cream on every coffee order and already has Christmas presents for their family stored in their closet in August. Because a body can be just a body, but details? Those go with people. And people are a /lot/ harder to hurt. 
> 
> While I doubt that's what was going on with Joey /consciously/ at all, in all fairness, both that and the fact he'd never paid enough attention to Quentin or any of the survivors to know what they really look like in detail, despite how often he sees them, or to even know Quentin /wears/ a necklace--which he does, always, and is a pretty visible object, and his reluctance to tell him his name or use Quentin's, are kiiinda in that vein. I'm sure he'd think of his reluctance as being nervous about upsetting the power balance, and it is, but uh. That power balance is he kills them. So. Not to rail /too/ much Joey though. While he's done a lot of sincerely fucked up stuff, he's at least still got the decency to see that and feel bad, and he /is/ a teenager in a truly horrific situation without really anyone to turn to for guidance who isn't even worse than he is, and he's got enough decent person in there to want to do the right thing when it doesn't put him in immediate great danger himself, and to try to do better, which ain't east at all, especially when it means admitting you fucked up bad, so that's not a lost cause of a person at all. Just one that sincerely needs work. Interesting to note that another unique thing about Legion in lore is that their Perk quotes are their own, and directed /at/ the Survivors, whereas most perk quotes come from victims, and are descriptions of the Killers instead. While they are not the /only/ killers to have quotes like this--the Pig, Nightmare, Ghostface, and Deathslinger do as well, at least partially--out of that set, almost all of them have quotes that are extremely predatory, in both meanings of the word, and not humanized at all. What makes Legion unique is that their comments directed at survivors, while certainly not /nice/, are still much more in the realm of things you'd say to someone you were in competition with, rather than just kind of viewed as a prey animal. And that? That's /rare/ for a DBD killer. In fact the /only/ two killers who have quotes they speak which are directed /at/ the survivors that sound remotely like a thing a human would say to someone they view as another fully realized human being at all--not too surprisingly considering that out of that lineup, they're the only two odd men out in what would otherwise be a list of serial killers for pleasure--are The Legion, and The Deathslinger.
> 
> Hey! Hope you enjoyed this third bit for New Dawn Fades, and thanks for reading! <3 It means a lot. I was very excited to get here and finally have Quentin and Joey actually /talk/ for the first time, and am very happy with how it turned out. Hope you like it too. ^u^


	4. Salvageable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Joey have their third exchange, and leave their first impressions.

There was a scream.

Joey jolted awake, heart racing, and looked to the window on his right automatically—his first instinct once he was awake enough to know what sound he’d heard at all that it must be one of the other hunters, but it hadn’t sounded like the Nurse, and almost before he’d even had time to realize that, the last few hours came back to him and clicked, and with a horrified feeling, Joey whipped around to look towards the couch. This time he was just in time to see Quentin scream.

_Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—_

He shot up from the chair in a panic, trying desperately to tell if anyone else had woken up yet, and bolted for the couch. _No, no, no, no, no._

_Fuck! What happened!—Why would he—?_

Wait. Okay, okay, he hadn’t moved, and the calls were incoherent, just sound, no words, and Joey could tell even before he reached him that the guy was still out cold, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be; at least he wasn’t like, trying to scream for help or run away. The guy must have been having a really horrible nightmare though, because the screams were _awful,_ like someone was trying to murder him, and if he didn’t _stop_ screaming immediately, someone _would_ be in a couple seconds here.

Reaching his side, Joey went to grab his shoulders and hesitated for a millisecond, trying to guess if it would hurt him too much so fucked up from being shot, but the guy was already pitching and struggling wildly in his sleep like he was fighting someone, so it wasn’t like it was going to be any worse for him than whatever he was doing to himself already, and Joey grabbed him and started to shake. “Quentin!” he hissed, “Stop! Wake up! You have to stop screaming!”

Quentin _kind_ of reacted to being grabbed and shaken, but he didn’t wake up. Just made a few unintelligible sounds of distress and struggled weakly against him, and then Joey saw him go to scream again, and, panicking, he clamped a hand over his mouth and nose to stifle the sound, and that worked, but also Quentin started to choke immediately. “Quentin!” tried Joey again, voice even more urgent, but low, shaking him again with the hand he still had on a shoulder. This time, the survivor’s eyes flew open.

For a second, Joey was relieved, and he started to smile, overwhelmingly grateful to not be in a life or death situation anymore, but then he saw the look on _Quentin’s_ face. The other guy’s eyes were incredibly dilated, and he was shaking a little and soaked in sweat. Alarm was the _only_ emotion registering on his face, but that wasn’t the really bad part. Joey knew he was looking at him, but there was a _complete_ lack of recognition in his eyes. _Oh no._

With way more force than Joey would have thought possible, the survivor swung his bound arms at him, and his fist caught Joey in the face—not with enough force to bruise probably, but enough to not feel great, and he was already going to swing again and starting to pitch madly under him too, his efforts to throw him off way more effective than Joey would have even thought possible tied up and so close to dead. As soon as Quentin had opened his eyes, Joey had started to move his hand back to let him breathe again, but with the hand gone now Quentin started to scream again, anger and fear together in his voice this time, so Joey immediately clamped it back over his face to smother that, which just made everything except the sound level worse, and got Quentin to start thrashing under him with about twice the mad effort he’d been using before as he panicked completely with his airways cut off.

“Wait!” tried Joey frantically, catching the other guy’s bound arms in his free hand this time when Quentin tried to ram them into his face and pushing them down against the couch and pinning them there, “Stop! Stop fighting me! I’m not trying to hurt you—you’re okay! You were just having a nightmare, and I woke you up—you’re okay! I’m not attacking you!”

Beneath him, Quentin was making furious, muffled sounds through the hand that was choking him, and he tried to get his legs up far enough under the blanket to be able to kick him and couldn’t, and his face contorted in pain doing that, but he didn’t stop trying. There was still no recognition in his eyes at all—nothing but anger and fear and desperation. _He’s too out of it—he’s too out of it, fuck, fuck—_

“Please!” said Joey, “Snap out of it! You have to stop—if you’re loud, the rest of the Legion’s gonna hear you and you’re gonna get caught! You have to stop screaming! Please, listen to me—I’m trying to help you—you know me, I’m Joey! I told you, remember?”

Quentin faltered a little and stared up at his face for a second then, and Joey thought it had worked, but it wasn’t enough. He was still too panicked and only half-conscious, and Joey could feel him shuddering and choking beneath him, and even really looking back at him now, there was still no recognition—just fear and panic—and then Joey realized he wasn’t actually looking at him at all—not at his eyes, not at the only part of his face he could have actually seen—he was looking at the mask—at the skull on it. _Shit. Shit-shit—_

“Remember?” said Joey, risking removing his hand from Quentin’s mouth to let him breathe again, and snatching his mask of with it in almost the same motion so the survivor could see his face, “—I’m Joey—See? We talked. I told you I’d make sure you were safe until you could go home. You’re okay. Whatever you were dreaming about, it didn’t happen. It’s okay. Remember?”

He had been _really_ afraid Quentin would scream or shout again the second he removed his hand to let him breathe, but he didn’t this time. He just froze and stared up at Joey with unfocused eyes like something had slammed into his head and stunned him, and then after a few seconds, the worryingly rapid rising and falling of his chest slowed down a little, and his expression changed from panic to worry. His eyes got a little more normal, and he blinked a few times, trying to focus. “Shit,” Quentin managed in a whisper, still breathing too fast. He blinked again and then looked up and met Joey’s gaze. “…J…Joey?” His voice sounded if anything even rougher and more ragged and sick than it had the last time he was awake, which was worrying as fuck, but at least he’d recognized him.

“Yeah,” said Joey with a nod, overcome with relief, “It’s me. You’re okay. You were having a nightmare.”

Quentin blinked a few times and winced and made a choked sound of pain, and then his eyes flew open and the panic was back all at once. “Fuck!” He shot forward like he was trying to sit up, and couldn’t with Joey on top of him and a hole through his gut, and cried out in pain. Apologetically, Joey quickly let go of the arms he’d forgotten he was pinning down and backed up off the couch, but a wave of horror had overcome Quentin’s features, and he didn’t seem to even notice. Joey was terrified he’d gone right back to how he was before or something for a second, but he didn’t look disoriented like he had, just frantic.

Not even looking at Joey, the survivor tried again to sit up and couldn’t do it, and collapsed back with his face scrunched up in pain from the effort, breathing hard. “Fuck,” said Quentin more desperately, almost crying. He tried again to sit up and couldn’t and choked on a whimper and fell back against the couch, then shakily found Joey’s face above him and turned to him, “A-am I stabbed?”

“What?” said Joey, taken aback, “Uh—y-yeah—the Deathslinger.” _Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no, he can’t have forgotten everything, right? _“You got shot, remember, and came—”

“—No—am I stabbed!” Quentin cut him off, “Am I bleeding! Please—I can’t—I can’t tell; I can’t see! Can you tell me?”

“Uh—O-okay,” said Joey placatingly, putting his hands up and then tugging the blankets down for Quentin and checking the bandage on his stomach. It had bleed through just the tiniest bit from before, but it wasn’t fresh, and Joey was proud of that, because they’d really been putting those stitches to the test. “No, you’re okay,” he said, glancing up, see? Same as before.”

“…” Quentin stared down at his torso for a second from a painfully bent position, and then slumped against the couch, face ashy still, but breathing slowing back down a little. “Fuck,” he whispered again, looking away from Joey at nothing. The panic was gone, but he seemed…Joey wasn’t sure—some weird mix of dismayed and destressed and despondent all at the same time. Calming down, but hurt about something just the same.

“…Are you okay?” he asked after a second, watching the hopeless, overwhelmed look on the other guy’s face with worry.

The survivor glanced up at him, not having expected that, then gave him a really sad kind of _‘Like you could possibly care’_ look, but before Joey had a chance to try to give that some kind of response, the look morphed, first to disbelief, and then shock.

Joey glanced over his shoulder, but the survivor was _definitely_ staring at him. _Is he still freaking out or something?_ Even breathing more steadily, the guy was still pale as a ghost and soaked in sweat and a little shaky and disoriented, but he cocked his head a little, shock becoming something a little different Joey didn’t have a name for, and even with his eyes a bit glazed over, the intensity of the scrutiny and the expression that went with it made his face get hot.

“…What?” asked Joey nervously.

“You took off your mask,” said Quentin like he couldn’t believe it.

 _OH SHIT!_ Fast as he could, Joey _snatched_ his mask from where he’d dropped it on the blankets and went the rip it back over his head while Quentin stared. Mask already half-on, he heard Quentin call, “Wait! –I didn’t!—You don’t have to put it back on!”

He got the piece of cloth on even enough he could see out the eye holes, and saw Quentin hesitate with his mouth open, then give up on what he’d been going to say. After a second he just glanced down a little hopelessly and defeatedly and offered a quiet, “It’d…be a lot less disturbing without it.”

Joey paused. After a second of thought, he pulled the mask back up and hesitated there holding it. “...It makes that big a difference?”

Quentin glanced back at him, and looking a little stunned, gave a small nod.

“Okay,” offered Joey quietly, pulling it back off awkwardly and stuffing it in his hoodie pocket. When he got the nerve to glance back at Quentin again, feeling way less secure without the layer of protection and anonymity between them, the guy was looking back with a stare like he couldn’t _understand_ Joey.

“…Thank you,” he offered quietly after a second.

No idea how to respond to that, Joey just gave a quick nod.

“I uh,” said Quentin after a second, “I’m sorry I…”

“You can’t help having a nightmare,” offered Joey, “It’s cool. Just uh, you might need to—” He started to make a motion towards his lips as he went to say ‘gag’, and saw recognition and horror wash over the features of the guy looking back and suddenly was having a very impossible time forming the word anymore. “—I mean, not all the time, just when I’m not here,” he tired quickly, “It’d only be for a little bit! It’s just it’s safer to- …” That wasn’t any better, and he couldn’t take the immensely hurt and full of dread look on the other guy’s face at all. When he didn’t finish the sentence, though, they were left just staring at each other in the painful silence of the room, Quentin breathing more unsteadily again, soaked in sweat and back to shivering now that he wasn’t beneath the covers, and looking incredibly pitiful and vulnerable covered in bandages and bruises and bound like that. The bruises that had been forming before were all deep purples and greens and massive now, and it looked so awful, and he was looking hopelessly up at Joey like he was somebody who had walked in with an array of torture instruments.

 _Shit. I-I don’t know what to…_ Fuck. Fuck! He didn’t know at _all!_ He’d never _been_ in a situation like this before. It felt terrible for some reason. _But I’m not even doing anything this time! I’m not! I-I don’t **think** I am? Am I?_

Finally, Quentin swallowed, then looked away from him, at the floor, and broke the strained silence. “…Please, if you. …” He glanced back up and met Joey’s gaze. “I can stay awake. I promise. I’ll stay quiet. You don’t have to.”

He looked so fucking desperate, and hopeless.

“But—” started Joey, because sure it would probably not feel very good to sleep tied up and gagged, but at least he’d know why this time, and it was better to deal with it and sleep so he could heal, than not and just be awake in pain for hours—if he could even really fight it and do that—but he saw Quentin’s face crumple, and couldn’t get himself to say that. How the _fuck_ were his eyes so big? He’d never seen anybody look this sad, a-and he looked like he was getting scared of him again too, and _so_ miserable, and Joey was _really_ getting sick of not meaning to do anything mean at all, and still making that guy end up looking this way, and he just couldn’t. “—Okay! Okay,” said Joey instead quickly, holding up a hand, “I won’t.”

Quentin looked back at him in surprise, then almost hopeful, and even if he knew the survivor was still definitely a little feverish and not totally himself, it made Joey feel good to see that.

“Look, I can’t stay in here forever,” continued Joey practically, “because the others are gonna wake up and we’ll have trials. So, if you want, you can stay awake in here while I’m gone, and then when I come back, I can watch to be able to wake you up if you start to scream when you sleep, and you can rest then, and no gag. If that’s what you want. You really need rest though, so I don’t—"

A horrified look flew across Quentin’s face, and Joey turned, expecting to see Frank standing in the doorway or something for a second before he looked and saw nothing and remembered that would be impossible. _What the?_

“—Trials!” said Quentin desperately, lurching forward without warning and snagging Joey’s hoodie with his bound hands, and Joey whipped back around just in time to get dragged forward by the force of suddenly supporting like half the guy’s bodyweight.

“What?” asked Joey frantically, trying to catch onto Quentin and keep him steady and get him to let go of his hoodie all at the same time, panicking for a second thinking he was being attacked, but he wasn’t—he had no idea what _was_ happening though.

“God—trials,” stammered Quentin, still clinging desperately to the black material of his jacket and suspended what could only have been incredibly painfully half-off the couch as he looked up feverishly at him, “I-I’m such an idiot—Please! Joey, God, oh God, how long has it been?”

“Been? Th-that you were asleep?” asked Joey, lost. It was getting impossible to stand with Quentin clinging onto his shirt like this, so he took a knee to support them both better. “Not long—I don’t know—maybe two hours? I don’t know!”

“Fuck—fuck—that might be too late,” said Quentin to himself frantically, “Please, God, let there be time.” He refocused on Joey with a vengeance. “Joey, please—my friends!”

Startled and completely at a loss, Joey staired down wide-eyed at the panicked guy still clinging precariously to his hoodie, mind going absolutely blank in the face of a request he didn’t understand and limbs locking up really helpfully. _What the fuck is happening._

“—I—they’ll go look for me,” said Quentin desperately, “Please—please, you have to tell them where I am!”

“What?” managed Joey, processing what Quentin had said the second after he said it, “Tell them you’re _here?_ You want me to talk to one in a _trial_? No way—we’re not allowed to do th—”

Despair washed over the other teen’s features and he tightened his grip on Joey’s hoodie and cut him off. “—Please—please! You don’t understand. I know you’re not supposed to, but—I am begging you. Joey. If they don’t know I’m alive and okay, and I can just come back in a little bit once we’re next to them again, they’re gonna think the _Deathslinger_ still has me.” He paused a second, waiting to see if that would get some kind of a response from Joey, but Joey was still kind of stunned speechless, so it didn’t, and he saw Quentin’s expression fall even further. “Joey, if they think he has me, they’ll go looking.”

Joey knit his brows in disbelief. “What—on foot? Without weapons? You said the survivors aren’t even next to him anymore—they can’t do that—they have no way to _get_ to him.”

“I know,” choked out Quentin, who Joey realized only when he heard that to his horror was dangerously close to crying, “I know—but I know them. They’ll _try_. It won’t matter they don’t know where to go. If they don’t have a guess, they’ll just go through God knows where to come looking. Please. I don’t know how much time we have, or if it’s already too late. Please, take the next trial you guys get and just tell somebody—any of them—I am _begging_ you, Joey. I am begging you to do this. Please. If you don’t, they’re.” His voice caught and he struggled for a second with what he was trying to say before finally powering brokenly through. “They’re gonna get hurt. They’ll try to find me, because they know I’m in trouble, a-and they won’t even know where to _look,_ and somebody’s gonna end up dead.” He forced himself to look back up into Joey’s face, eyes brimming with tears. “Please, please don’t let that happen to them. Please.”

Still a mile behind his companion in really understanding any of this, Joey just gaped at him and said nothing as he struggled to run all that through his head. _Is he serious? They’d fucking do that? That’s insane! They’ll get mowed down, and they wouldn’t even be able to find him! Shit—that’s pretty bad. I—but. Shit—we aren’t supposed to!—A-and if I talk to any of them, they’re gonna think I’m weak and they can exploit that shit in the future, and it’ll never end. Plus! If any of the others overhear me or the Entity sees, I am fucked. I don’t even know **what** would happen, but it would not be fucking good! Shit, I. I mean, that’s terrible, but I don’t think I can do it. That’s way too risky. Even if it went **well,** I’d be fucked. I. I just—I-I don’t think I can help… _“I…can’t do that,” he managed, finally finding his voice, “I’m sorry—I—"

Whatever strength of will had been keeping Quentin together shattered at the words and tears started to run down the side of his face. He looked brokenly past Joey at nothing for a second hopelessly, thinking fast and breathing ragged, then squeezed his eyes shut before looking back up at Joey. “Please,” he said much more quietly, his whole voice shaking now, “Please—Please do this. I can’t-I can’t let them die for me. Please.”

Joey had never been in a situation like this before, and he had no idea what to do. He didn’t think he’d _ever_ seen somebody look this broken and miserable, and he felt terrible, but what the fuck was he supposed to do about it? It was _super_ risky, and it wasn’t his fault this had happened! He was already taking a big risk by just letting this one survivor stay here for a week or two. If he just kept doing dangerous stuff for some total stranger to be nice, he was going to end up super fucked for it—probably even worse than all the terrifying stuff he was imagining right now, but— _Holy FUCK_ how did a person look that desperate? Had his eyes always been _this_ fucking huge? The guy was still clinging to his jacket, which, along with Joey’s hands on his shoulders, were the only thing keeping him from pitching forwards and falling off the couch onto the floor, but his arms were starting to shake with the effort, and he wasn’t even noticing. He was just staring at Joey with the biggest and bluest fucking eyes he’d ever _seen,_ and Jesus Christ he hadn’t known a human being could look that pitiful, what the _fuck_ —what the fuck! It was like trying to turn away a soaking wet dog pleading to be let inside during a thunderstorm, and it was painful to look at. _I’m sorry! I’m sorry, but I can’t help you this time! I’m already taking too many risks. I’d have way too big a chance of getting hurt if I said yes. I can’t._

“Please,” begged Quentin with hopeless desperation, crying silently through the words like he was feeling too much hopelessness for his body to contain anymore, “I know it could get you in trouble, but I can’t do it myself, and I don’t know what else to do—please—please—they’re gonna die! I—I can—I can make a trade!” he added then feverishly, eyes lighting up with just a little bit of desperate hope, and trying to pull himself closer to Joey, frantic with the idea, “Please—whatever it takes! I can—I can just give up!” he offered, talking so fast his words spilled over each other, “Every trial—f-for, for as long as it takes, I swear! Forever! Any time it’s you, I’ll just—just turn myself in and let you kill me! I could trade you stuff too! I’ve got—got tools and flashlights—I don’t know what you—” He looked up at Joey, breathing shakily, and saw the look on his face and his expression plummeted. “Or. Or if you don’t trust me to keep my word, I can…” he tried brokenly, searching for an option in his head, “Y-you can—take one of my hands!” he offered, thrusting his bound fists closer to Joey and losing his grip completely on the fabric of his jacket.

Completely overwhelmed, Joey barely managed to catch him in time to save him from faceplanting on the floor, but it didn’t even _slow_ the stream of feverish desperation from the survivor. He just latched onto Joey’s arm as soon as he caught him and started to help him back onto the couch, found his face, and locked eyes like he didn’t even care he’d been a few inches away from reinjuring himself.

“Just cut it off,” propositioned Quentin, trying to twist his bound left wrist towards him as an offering, “So I’ll be slower and worse in every trial forever—I can’t break my word on that! Just take it as payment! I don’t care! I—” He stopped, and the tiny little bit of hope that had still been flickering vanished. “I…” The survivor slumped and drooped his head for a second, then looked back up at Joey. “I know you could just do it anyway…” he finished hopelessly, and Joey saw the realization in his face that he truly had nothing to offer, and how utterly it had broken him. “I…I could just leave, if that would be enough,” he tried a final time, voice cracking, “If you warn them, I’ll just go—you won’t have to risk getting in trouble to let me stay, and I’ll take my chances with the Shape. Please. I-if there’s anything at all I could—”

“—J-Jesus Christ!” said Joey, finally finding his voice again through the absolute overwhelming horror he’d been feeling in higher proportions than ever before in his life, “-No! I don’t—God! What the fuck—No! I’m don’t wanna—cut off your hand! I’ll do it, okay! I’ll do it—just, quit offering to do horrifying shit like that! ”

Quentin stopped and stared at him in surprise, breaths still coming in shaky and weak. “…Do you mean it? You’re not just saying it to…make me shut up?”

As soon as the guy said it, Joey could see how totally he suddenly believed that was the case. “No! I’m not lying,” said Joey as reassuringly as he could while still feeling pretty frantic himself. Quentin considered that, then locked eyes with him all anxious and searchingly, as if he were almost too afraid to hope. “I’m not,” said Joey more steadily, “I swear it, okay? I’ll do it, and… You can just…owe me one.”

Quentin nodded as soon as the words were out, frantic to accept any kind of deal, and still looking all stunned and overwhelmed. _Shit, at least he’s not crying anymore._

“Th-Thank you,” offered the survivor after a second.

“Yeah,” said Joey, “…Look uh, you should lie back down,” he added, trying gently to move him back onto the couch. Quentin seemed a little surprised to discover he was basically hanging off the couch onto Joey, and let himself be moved this time, glancing up at Joey and flushing and then looking away again as he set him back against the cushions. “That okay?” asked Joey.

“Yeah,” said Quentin quietly with a little nod, “Thank you.”

“Sure,” said Joey, snagging the blankets and setting them back over Quentin again so he’d quit freezing up here. Quentin watched him in silence with a look on his face it was hard for Joey to place. It wasn’t a bad look, though, so that was something. _Grateful maybe?_ No. That would make sense, but it wasn’t exactly that either.

“I mean it,” said Quentin as Joey straightened up again, and then, with a little sudden anxiety, “You’ll really do it?”

“I swear,” said Joey with a nod.

“Is there…anything I can do to repay you?” asked Quentin.

 _Repay me?_ This guy never did what Joey thought he was going to do. He looked so pale in the moonlight coming in through the window, and ashy and sick, but fervent in spite of it all. _I think he really means that._ “I thought you…” Joey tried to pick the right words. “…Wouldn’t consider me somebody you could owe. After all of the, uh…” He waved a hand vaguely. “Stuff I’ve done.”

Quentin stared at him, taken aback, and then almost worried. “…No, I. Those aren’t…connected.”

Joey tilted his head.

“I-I don’t know,” said Quentin in distress, “You. It isn’t about that. I don’t think it’s all a big scale where all the good shit you do goes in one side and the bad stuff in the other. That would make all the actual _stuff_ so completely meaningless. I don’t think it’s like that at all. I mean. I don’t know you, and you’ve.” He stopped, and for an instant the fear was back in his eyes. _Remembering,_ realized Joey with, for the first time in a long time in regards to his work here, immense guilt. The guy pushed through it though, and kept going. “Done stuff to me. To all of us. …I guess you will again,” he added, looking away for a second, then back, “But you’re still taking a risk to save the people I care about. And that’s its own thing, and I owe you for that.”

His eyes had kind of misted up on the last words, and Joey didn’t really understand why, but he felt some kind of way about it. That hadn’t been what he’d expected the guy to _say_ either, and he was still trying to think about it. It was…nice. I mean, it wasn’t like it was his fault he’d ended up here with Frank and Julie and Susie and started killing, or like he could stop, but he…I mean, he wasn’t an _idiot._ He knew it was bad. There was no way to care about that, because he would die if he did, but he knew, deep down—of course he did, and he always had. And he knew there was way too much of it now to ever really be something he could balance a scale against no matter what he did, like, that was completely hopeless, but, it was nice to think maybe some of the little things he did could still matter on their own anyway. He used to feel like this a lot, and he’d missed it. Nothing good or fun or nice really ever happened out here. He missed getting to watch them happen. He missed getting to do them.

“Okay, well,” said Joey after a second, taking a few steps back towards his chair and stuffing his hands in his pocket, “Uh. If you want to pay me back, you could tell me about yourself.”

“Tell you about myself?” asked Quentin, taken aback.

“Yeah,” said Joey, sitting down, “Or just talk to me a little. I’m gonna be stuck in here a lot watching you for days maybe just in case while you’re stuck here, and I kinda feel like you’re gonna be silent the whole time, and I’ll be bored as shit.”

“…Yeah, okay,” said Quentin after a second of processing that, “I can talk to you. What about?”

“You’re bad at talking, huh?” said Joey with a smile.

The survivor smiled back on impulse, and Joey felt immensely proud. _I think that’s the first time I got you to smile on my own. See? I’m not so terrifying. This isn’t gonna be awful, and you’re just gonna be stuck here a while, and then you can go home, and it’ll all be fine._

“I guess so,” said Quentin with absolutely no real bite to his tone, “But you’re not doing much better. Had to cash in a favor to get a conversation going at all.”

“Okay, well first things first, because I just thought of this,” said Joey, sitting up a little and nervous again, “If I’m supposed to grab one of your friends and say, ‘Hey don’t run off looking for Quentin—he’s okay. He’s just trapped in Ormond until realms shift again’—how the hell do I get them to actually believe that?”

“Oh, right,” said Quentin, face paling a little, “They’ll probably just think you killed me or something. Uhm…” He thought for a second, then glanced back up. “I’ve got a lighter in jacket.” He glanced around for the jacket, and didn’t see it.

“—It’s covered in blood. I left it downstairs,” said Joey. _Ohhhh shit shit shit, I forgot to clean the blood,_ he thought, trying to hide it from his face, _I’m gonna have to go do that fast before anybody else wakes up._ “I got the lighter though,” he added, propping a leg on the chair and unzipping one of his pockets to retrieve it, “I got—saved,” he corrected nervously, “all of your stuff.”

“Oh. Can I have the jacket back?” asked Quentin tentatively, “And my shirt?”

“Sure, of course,” said Joey hurriedly, “I’ll uh. I’ll bring them up and let ‘em dry out. They need a little patching and are gonna be stained as shit though.”

Quentin gave a resigned sigh. “Well, at least I have them.” He offered Joey a tired smile. “Thanks. Uh. If you’ve already got the lighter, you can use that. Or my empty bottle of Zoneral. Everybody’s seen both of those, so they’ll know you must have gotten them from me. Wait, this is stupid. I can just write a note.”

“Oh—good point,” said Joey, “Wait,” he immediately reconsidered, “I don’t know if I can convince a survivor to stand still and trust me long enough to read.”

“…Right,” said Quentin, chagrined, “Uh, they’ll recognize my stuff. Uhm. Tell whoever you stop that ‘Meg’s next episode of Welcome to Hell with Meg Thomas is going to be on whatever the fuck “realm fashion” is supposed to mean.’ Nobody but one of us would know that, and it’s not something you could possibly have heard in a trial. You weren’t next to us last week, so you couldn’t have overheard her talking to herself on a run or something either. That’ll work. There’s no other way you could know that, except me telling you voluntarily. You wouldn’t know to ask it if you were setting up a trap or something.”

“Uhm—hold on,” said Joey, digging for something to write with and finding an old pen in one of his pockets and just skipping the middle-man and using his arm as a canvas, “What exactly is ‘Welcome to Hell with Meg Thomas’?”

“Survivor secret,” said Quentin.

“Really?” said Joey.

He gave a nod.

“Uh. Okay,” said Joey after a second, finishing his scribbles, “Say ‘Meg’s next episode of Welcome to Hell with Meg Thomas is about “realm fashion”’?”

“Yep,” said Quentin, “Tell them I told you to say that, and they’ll believe you.” His expression changed suddenly and his face became more ashy and drawn. “Dwight…”

“What?” said Joey.

“Uhm, I was. With a friend, when the Deathslinger got me,” said Quentin, glancing over at him.

“Right,” said Joey, vaguely remembering him saying that before.

“He attacked both of us,” said Quentin.

“You _both_ fell in?” asked Joey. _Geeze_ that was some shit luck.

“More or less,” said Quentin without looking at him, “But uh. He got shot before I did.”

“Oh shit, he got shot too? With one of the-?” He made an ambiguous gesture for harpoon.

Quentin nodded, looking grave. “He was hurt pretty bad. He made it back up right when the realms switched, so he should be okay. He was in our woods, but, it _was_ a couple minutes walk back to camp, and I think he was hurt worse than me.

Joey felt a little sick too. Those weren’t the world’s best odds. “So you think…?”

“I’m sure he’s okay,” said Quentin like he was trying really hard to make himself believe it, “But if you could please ask? Just in case he’s…out there in woods, needing help?”

“Sure,” said Joey, because what was one more exchange with a survivor if he was already going to break the rules anyway.

“And I’d uh,” Quentin added much quieter, looking down, “I-I’d really to…know he’s okay.”

Joey watched him for a second, thinking about that. How he’d feel if Frank had been injured and was stuck off somewhere alone maybe. Even if he was in more trouble, he’d definitely still have been more worried about Frank. “I’ll ask,” he promised.

Quentin glanced back up and just looked at him for a few seconds, then said, “Thank you,” like he really meant it.

“Welcome,” said Joey. He stood up then, and took a step towards the door, then turned to face Quentin. “Look, I uh, gotta go to clean up some of that mess downstairs so the others don’t notice and start asking questions, and I don’t got a lot of time before they start waking up, so I might not be able to pop back in until the end of the day. Can you be quiet alone in here okay?”

Quentin gave him a nod, expression serious.

“Okay. Good,” said Joey, “And you promise not to try to like…get out of that and go steal our shit or jump one of my friends?”

“I…I don’t think I could do that even if I _really_ wanted to,” said Quentin, “But yeah, I swear. Trust me, the _last_ thing I want to do to you right now is stab you in the back. I wouldn’t. I’ll stay here, stay quiet, and wait.”

Earlier, Joey had been really nervous about the potential of this guy doing exactly what he was promising not to, and breaking out and wreaking havoc, and swearing not to probably wouldn’t have made him feel entirely more secure, but Quentin looked like he really, really meant that, and he had kind of gotten the very strong impression in the little time he’d known Quentin that he was a person who took his word really seriously when he gave it, so he believed it this time.

“Alright then,” said Joey, “I’m sorry you’re probably gonna get super bored. I’d just try to sleep through the day.” Quentin got a really funny look on his face for a second, but it disappeared, and he didn’t say anything, so Joey thought maybe he’d imagined it. “If I can’t come back for a couple hours or more, do you need anything? I don’t…really have a lot for uh, wounds and stuff. But I could get you another blanket or something.”

“I’m okay,” said Quentin, offering him a weak smile, “I’m pretty warm like this. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Joey, running a mental checklist and trying to see if he’d covered everything. He thought he had. “Then just uh, stay here, stay quiet. No matter what you hear, don’t try to get up or some out. If you do that, you should be fine, and I’ll come back as soon as I can to tell you how your friend is. Okay?”

“Okay,” agreed Quentin solemnly.

Joey gave a nod and turned to go, trying to remember all the things downstairs he needed to try to cover up or hide.

“Joey,” came Quentin’s voice from behind him as he reached the threshold.

He paused and turned to look, and the survivor was where he had been before, watching him again with that look he’d had earlier Joey hadn’t quite been able to place.

“Thank you,” said Quentin, meeting his gaze, “For all of this. I. …I don’t even really know what else to say. Thank you for saving me, and for doing all of this. I know you could just as easily have not.” He glanced away for a second, and smiled a sad kind of smile, then looked back at Joey. “I’m glad it was you.”

 _Me?_ thought Joey, confused and kind of stunned, because this was the nicest thing somebody had said to him in a long time, and it was coming from a survivor he’d killed and who was terrified of him.

“I don’t think…if I’d ended up anywhere else,” said Quentin, holding his gaze again with that sad kind of smile, “If anybody else had found me. …I don’t think a single one of them would have done what you did. I’d probably…die fast, if I was lucky, really slow if not. I don’t think there’s anybody else who would have helped me. I didn’t think there would be anybody at all.”

“…” There had been something he was going to say back—‘You’re welcome’ maybe, but as he went to, he realized finally what the look on the other teen’s face was. He was touched. Joey had taken one look at him and pulled a knife and thrown him on the floor and kicked him in the gut and nearly killed him and then just decided to try to undo the damage he’d caused, and this guy who was terrified of him and had watched him kill his friends and been gutted screaming beneath him in enough memories from them to jumble together, was touched.

What was it he’d said? That things never went well for him? No—it was that nobody ever helped him, or showed mercy, not in situations like this. Not once. And Joey hadn’t even really done anything good—he’d just not done the awful things he was expecting, and that had been enough to make him moved because he was being shown more kindness than he could possibly have expected in a situation like this. _…even though I. …really haven’t been that kind at all,_ thought Joey, somehow feeling massively worse realizing what the look was than just thinking the guy hated him, _I tied you up and threatened you and you had to beg to get my help. But your life is still so shitty that’s a lot to you, I guess._

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like knowing it was true. It hurt, and it shouldn’t because he didn’t even know this guy, but it did now. It was…so fucking lonely.

 _I’m lonely a lot too now,_ thought Joey, trying to find a point of kindship between them that would make the other guy less alone, sitting there looking like he did. Cutting such a sorry picture with some of his curly brown hair still matted with sweat, and his skin ashy covered in dark purple bruises, and his bound wrists the blanket wasn’t hiding, looking up at Joey like he was deeply grateful it had been this murderer who’d almost killed him in the woods instead of a worse one, and that really meant something to him. Joey guessed it did.

“I’m sorry,” said Joey.

Quentin’s expression changed, and he looked concerned by that answer.

“That I hurt you, and then I was an ass,” said Joey.

Surprise flickered across the survivor’s features, and he started to say something, but Joey beat him to it.

“I promise I won’t let you get hurt any more while you’re here,” added Joey, “and you’re welcome for the rest.”

Quentin tilted his head a little and watched him thoughtfully for a second, and then gave him a weak smile. “I forgive you.”

 _WHAT?_ thought Joey, horrified, _I didn’t know he could do that!! I mean— would do that! Fuck! Why? _“Why?” asked Joey in distress.

“Because you’re sorry,” said Quentin, like this seemed like it should have been self-explanatory. He gestured weakly towards his torso with his bound wrists. “And you did what you could to make up for it. Both times,” he added, glancing up at Joey’s face and giving him a smile. “Which is what people do when they’re sorry and mean it. It’s…all anybody _can_ do, and it’s good enough for me.”

Joey knew he should say something back, but he couldn’t think of anything _to_ say. He was still trying to process that, and think straight, and get over the way the other guy had looked at him, and so they just stood looking at each other in silence for a second. “I-I better go,” stammered Joey finally, just desperate to break the silence, and still feeling all kinds of wrong.

“Okay,” said Quentin, expression falling a little, but trying to look the same. Still trying to smile at him.

Joey stepped out, and then, worried that Quentin had maybe looked a little afraid again, called, “Get some rest, okay?” quietly back over his shoulder.

He heard a quiet, “I will. Thank you,” from back in the room before letting the cloth that served as a door fall shut behind him.

Stilly trying to process everything that had just been said, Joey took a few steps towards the stairs, and then paused. There wasn’t a lot of time to do that, though, as much as he wanted to. It was getting too long since the others had gone to sleep, or they’d had a trial. He was going to have to be quick getting rid of the blood and shit downstairs. _I guess I’m gonna have to figure out a way to get nobody to join me on a trial too,_ he thought ruefully.

Pushing off the bannister and turning to head down the stairs, Joey wondered if it was true. He wondered if there really was nobody else who would have helped Quentin. He wondered what that meant to him if it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Discussion of the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street film in the first paragraph below. TW for brief mentions of pedophilia in the notes there, as it relates to the antagonist and plot]  
> Quentin Smith originates from the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s an unusually structured horror film, because of instead of characters that make terrible decisions that get them killed, and a story with some warm bodies to serve as cannon fodder while following the story of a small family unit or a final girl who manage to survive, the film follows several characters who serve very honestly as protagonist up to their death, at which point the film jumps to another and does the same, and the two characters who survive don’t even step into the spotlight until about halfway through. All of them fight like hell, do their best to make wise decisions, and still are torn apart despite their best, most frantic efforts. The antagonist, Freddy Krueger, is a pedophile who was burned to death by a mob of enraged parents who when they found out what he’d done to their children, and has returned as a demon after death to seek vengeance on the parents for his death and on the children for telling the truth, by slowly stalking, tormenting, getting them to remember what happened to them as a child, and then killing each of the preschoolers he formerly abused. The only two out of the thirteen children he abused survive his killing spree as a demon stalking them in their nightmares: Quentin Smith, and Nancy Holbrook, who work together to fight back and are able to drag him out of the dream world and kill him together. This proves not to be enough to put him in the dirt any more permanently than last time, though, and he shows up again to murder Nancy’s mom in front of her. In the following weeks, he stalks Quentin in his dreams, taking his time, and Quentin tries to find some way to prepare for what he knows is coming. Eventually, it does come, and he ends up trapped despite his best efforts, about to join eleven other classmates who suffered a similarly brutally undeserved end. He’s a fighter though, and refuses to give up, and tries to will him to death since they’re in a world of the mind, and the Entity hears that call. Which lands both of them trapped in the realm. Which, to Quentin, despite the agony he endures, is worth it. He’s probably the only person in the entire realm as a survivor to whom it has been worth it. But he got to take Freddy with him, which means Nancy and his own father, both of whom he loved, will get to have lives, and nobody else will die like his best friend and so many others did again, and if he has to suffer in hell for that forever, it’s a price he has to be willing to pay.
> 
> It's been hell though. Because Freddy Krueger is about the last person ever to stop seeking vengeance and holding grudges. Not only does that make trials hell, but considering in his canon paragraph, Benedict Baker describes Quentin as being terrified to even fall asleep when outside of a trial with Freddy, I can only assume either Freddy torments him in dreams, even if he can’t really kill him; Freddy can kill him if he falls asleep, but in the realm, Quentin has the choice not to, since biological needs are completely different, so he eternally has to force himself to never take rest and can’t even get the blessing of micro-death that naps are like the rest of the survivors can, and for him it just never ends; or Quentin had no idea which of those two is true, and has never been willing to fall asleep and find out. Which, uh, I find quite reasonable. I’ve always written him as a combination of the last two. Hasn’t fucked around to find out, but deeply suspects he would die if he slept for real. And, because in the NOES canon and DbD, memories, fear, and belief play a huge role in reality, unfortunately that fear has made it very true, and if he ever does sleep, Freddy will realize it too. Quentin never has, until falling asleep here while too fucked up and out of it to realize he shouldn’t. Luckily for him, two areas of the Entity’s realm are completely impervious to interference from Freddy: Anna’s home, which is impervious as it can be in all directions, to protect anyone from her getting out, given the woman’s incredible force of will strong enough to canonically break her free from the influence of the Entity itself; and Ormond, which while not usually strongly reinforced, is absolutely blacked out behind foggy two-way glass from Badham, because the Entity knows what a problem Freddy absolutely loves to be, and doesn’t want him to know its four teenagers even exist. Meaning that while he doesn’t know it, there are exactly two places in the entire realm it is possible for Quentin to actually get a good night’s sleep, and he’s currently in one of them.


	5. Old Habits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joey takes a trial to fulfil his promise to Quentin and tell the survivors not to risk dying to come hunt for him, but actually doing all of that proves a lot harder than he first expected.

“Jesus _Christ,_ why are you throwing such a fucking _fit_ about this?” asked Frank, thoroughly at the end of his rope after a five minute conversation, which was some kind of a start to a day.

“You’re the one who’s being weird and making a big deal and won’t let me do it!” shot back Joey, who had _not_ been thinking on his feet extremely well so far, “It’s one trial!”

“What is _happening_ ,” said Susie quietly.

Julie sighed.

“I just don’t get why you would suddenly want us all to basically pack up shop,” replied Frank in exasperated confusion, “I get it if you want to solo a hunt, just to like, push your limits or what the fuck, but you want us to just like, go deep and take the whole day off?”

“Yeah, I kind of want a turn,” agreed Susie, “I haven’t had one.”

“He’s probably just afraid he’ll embarrass himself if he tries to solo a trial, and we’re there to watch him fail,” said Julie tiredly.

“I am not!” said Joey, “I’m not gonna fuck up, and I’m not scared either!”

“Then why do you want us gone?” said Susie.

“Because!” answered Joey, stalling for time to make up an answer. He’d seriously tried to think up a good lie, but he’d only gotten a little way through the whole planning process when Julie had woken up, and then everybody had, and so he was floundering now that he was at the half of his slapdash plan he hadn’t thrown together at all yet. _Geeze! At least I got the fucking clothes out of the way,_ he tried to console himself. _Come on, think. You can do that—think on your feet._ “I’ve got…an idea,” he finished after a second, hoping they’d buy it. There was a pause, and a lack of voices talking over his, so that was a start at least.

“…An idea?” asked Frank a little skeptically, prompting him to go on.

“Yeah,” said Joey, finding another few pieces of his lie to snap together, “An idea for a thing to do in trials, and I think it would be really cool, but I don’t want you guys to see it until I’ve tried it out a couple times.” _Fuck! Now if they buy this, I actually have to think of one…_

“So you _were_ scared about getting embarrassed,” said Julie.

“No! It’s not because I’m nervous!” said Joey, “It’s because like—I don’t want to tell you what it is yet, because I want you to _see_ it when I tell you, but also like, I think it’ll take a little actual practicing for me to get just right, and I want the first time you see it to be when it’s gonna actually look all great like it’s supposed to.”

“…So. You want to show _off,_ ” said Frank, “And that’s why you want us to take a hike.”

“Yeah! Okay! Is that so bad?” defended Joey, “We never do anything fun! So I want to get to show off a cool technique, sue me!”

“Okay, okay! Calm down! I’m not mad about it,” said Frank reassuringly, “Confused, but, I don’t really care. If it’s a big deal to you, fine. I’ll uh, go chill out deep in the subconscious for a couple hours. Just come and, uh, I guess give us a call when the trial’s over.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?” asked Susie, confused.

“Because I knew you guys were gonna make fun of me for wanting to practice first so I could show it off right,” said Joey defensively.

“But we never do that,” said Susie.

 _Stop paying attention!_ thought Joey desperately, _Please just let it go!_ “Sure you do,” he lied, “The first time I showed you knife tricks, you and Julie both made fun of me.”

“That wasn’t because you were showing off, it was because you stabbed yourself in the hand,” said Julie.

“That’s meaner!” said Joey.

“You were fine—it was like a little scratch,” said Susie, “But it _was_ really funny you hit a finger right at ‘my fingers will come off’ in the song. It was like ‘my fingers will come FUCK’.”

“Yeah,” said Julie with a contented smile in her voice, “That was a good day.”

“Okay, but you see what you’re like,” said Joey, anxious to change the subject now that this was actually going pretty well, “So you get it. Can I take it alone?”

“Suuure,” said Frank slowly, sensing to make sure this was the consensus. As far as Joey could tell, it seemed to be, although Susie was giving him suspicious side-eyes and not at _all_ trying to hide it.

“Thanks,” said Joey, feeling immense relief.

“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” asked Julie.

“Well,” lied Joey, trying to both think fast and also sound convincing, which did not come easy to him, “it would have been even cooler to show you a new technique if you didn’t even know I was working on one.”

“Oh,” said Susie like that made perfect sense. _THAT’S the lie you believed??_

“I’m sure it’ll be…fine—fun, cool, whatever,” said Frank, “Honestly, I also don’t mind getting a few more hours of sleep. I was expecting it to be my turn to run a trial, and I have _absolutely_ no problem swapping places. I’m still tired from yesterday.”

“Amen,” said Julie. They’d all four tag-teamed a trial of Julie’s as hard as possible, because they’d gotten four of the most fight-back oriented survivors—the blonde girl who stabbed people, the blonde girl with curly hair and a sleeve tattoo, the British guy, and the cop—and honestly, Joey was still tired from it too, even though he hadn’t been the one whose body was running a marathon, _or_ the strategist running point internally. The stress pressure was still real. “I could do with a little relaxing. You have fun Joey,” added Julie supportively before slipping back deep into the subconscious like a ghost just peacing out and slipping through the floor and dropping down to the basement four stories below.

“You sure you want to go full-solo?” checked Frank.

“Totally,” said Joey, trying _really_ hard to bottle up how fucking relieved he was so nobody else would sense it.

“Okay then,” said Frank tiredly, “Good luck.”

Joey turned to Susie.

“…” After a second, she heaved a sigh. “Okay, fine. But I want a turn later, because I am _tired_ of being cooped up, and I _want_ fresh air.”

“Totally,” agreed Joey a little too fast.

She sighed again, and then was gone like the rest.

Joey waited a few seconds to make sure it was legit, then heaved a huge, relieved exhale, and snagged his knife. One problem down, uhhh, some not huge other number left to go. First up would be figuring out what the fuck to say to a survivor, and how to get one to listen, but he was sure he could figure that out. They’d all four gotten the sense they’d be taking a trial soon, which was the Entity’s only version of a heads up, so it might be a few minutes, but he wouldn’t have long to wait. A little to wait though, thankfully, which was good, because it gave him time to think. And plan.

 _Shit, why did I have to agree to this?_ he thought nervously. _Ahhh, fuck! Fuck! I didn’t actually get Quentin to write me a note either! God damn it…_ Well, everybody was gone, so he could run up and do that real fast, probably. Unless he was sleeping. Well, he could wake him up for this, right? It’d—

There was a familiar sensation of immense pressure, and fear that bore a physical weight. Power in a tangible form, like the heaviness before a storm, or a snapped electric cable leaking charge. And Joey realized he wasn’t going to get time to grab a note _or_ plan what to say, because that meant it hadn’t been much of a heads up at all, and when he turned around, there would be a portal waiting there, and a trial ready beyond it. _Shit._

* * *

_Shit,_ thought Joey desperately, looking around the darkened space with its passive churning electronics and flashing red lights. He’d gotten the lab place—the new one, with rats everywhere and weird weeds all over the walls and shit in the air and a fucking weird bigass evil looking hole in one of the walls.

Joey did _not_ like this place. He always felt like he was breathing in poison or something. Not that it actually hurt him, it didn’t, but, he still didn’t like it. _Probably no one does._

Okay. What to do.

He’d promised Quentin he’d talk to a survivor, but he couldn’t just fuck up and take it easy either—he still had to hunt. So…?

 _Uhhh, grab the first one I see? Get it out of the way?_ wondered Joey as he started quickly down a hallway in search of prey, _O-or wait, like, until we’re down to one or two, if it’s going well, so I have more time to breathe?_ That seemed smarter, right? _But shit, I guess like, probably the best thing for Quentin would be if I told somebody and then killed them right after, because then they’d go back to the fire fastest, and be able to stop his other friends from doing something reckless._ Of course, that would be almost exactly the thing Quentin had been so horrified by and asked him _not_ to do to the other survivors, but what he didn’t ever find out about wouldn’t hurt him, right? And getting killed in a trial wouldn’t be as bad as outside one, so it was more important even. _Yeah, maybe I should do it first. Get it over with, so like, I can spend the rest of the trial making sure they know this is a one-time thing, and it doesn’t mean I’m gonna take it any easier on them._

He heard someone on a gen close by—in the room with the big evil portal hole thing in the wall. The tended to be a good bet. Survivors pretty much _always_ seemed to either go for this one, or the gen upstairs first, so those were always the first two he checked, and somehow it _always_ paid off. _You’d think they’d catch on?_ Huh. Maybe just like, the other killers all _never_ checked these gens, so they thought they had pretty good odds when they couldn’t know it was him yet.

Breaking into a full sprint, Joey hopped over a windowsill and tore up the scaffolding to the platform in the portal room that held a generator and spotted not one, but two survivors there—the really pretty girl with dreads, and the professor looking guy in his late twenties.

Both of then let go of the generator and took off at a run away from it before he was up, going for two separate holes in the glass ceiling for a quick way to the floor below, since that was the only way that wasn’t a dead-end, and Joey went after the professor, because he didn’t super like fucking up the pretty girl with dreads and she was actually one of his least favorites to get in trials. Every time he saw her, all he could think was that she looked a little bit like Meggie, the first girlfriend he’d ever had, back in high school, and that made him feel _super_ weird about fucking her up, even when he knew it was his job.

 _Sorry man,_ thought Joey, dropping through the same hole the professor had taken and catching him between his shoulder blades while he was still stumbling back to his feet, only after he’d done it hit with a sudden uneasy _What the fuck?_ feeling at the thought. That was _not_ a good thought. Not a useful thought. Not a thought Joey was going to have again. That thought was going to make him feel like shit and do a bad job. This was how shit was! He hunted, they ran. It wasn’t his fault the Entity picked him for a better role, and it was survival of the fittest. They did what they had to to stay alive, and so would the guy he’d just stabbed if their roles had been reversed, and that sucked for him, but that was how it was. The guy could run away, and if he did, and they all made it out, _Joey_ would be the one in trouble and getting punished, so it was kind of the same, right? And fuck it, it wasn’t his fault or his job to care. And it was kind of fun. He liked this, right? He liked being feared. It made him feel tough, and powerful, and useful, and proud.

The professor guy cried out in pain and stumbled forward into a desk, then pulled himself up just in time to see Joey lunge for him, dropped, and rolled to the side, leaving Joey to plow into the desk and topple right over it. Cursing and feeling his cheeks heat up with embarrassment and anger, Joey made it back to his feet and whipped around to see the man racing for a nearby pallet and lunged at him full force, taking the pallet across his face as it slammed down and failing, and falling back in pain. Humiliated, he screamed in a mixture of pain and rage, tapped into the power the Entity gave them, and flew into a frenzy. He leapt over the pallet, and caught the professor in the back as he turned to run, then hit him again, and again as he screamed and tried to fall back from Joey. The man took a fifth hit and was knocked into the side of the door frame he was trying to clear and tripped, and Joey was on him before he could catch himself, bringing the wickedly curved hunting knife down into his back and shoulder, and then when the man hit the ground and rolled onto his side, deep into his arms as he went to shield his face.

 _FUCK you!_ thought Joey, infuriated, tapping easily back into his usual trial headspace once he’d gotten a start, _You think I’m easy to push around? You’re gonna wish you hadn’t been so fucking proud of that little dodge! I’m gonna make you sorry!_

Joey got him in the chest, and the man jerked and cried out and stopped shielding his head to try and catch Joey’s hands as he went to drag it out, but Joey elbowed him in the face, and the man’s head snapped back against the floor and he went still for a second, stunned, and Joey seized the opportunity to snag him by his collar and sling him up over a shoulder.

He was halfway to a hook when he remembered he’d been supposed to talk to one of them, and been planning to do it to the first one.

 _Fuck,_ thought Joey, heartrate that had just started to calm picking right back up. He hesitated a second, considering trying with this guy. The man was struggling to fight free, like they always did, but he was doing it feebly. There was blood pouring down Joey’s hoodie. _Shit, I kind of overdid it there,_ thought Joey a little guiltily, because he’d promised, _This one’s definitely not gonna listen to me now. _Annoyed with himself, and wanting an outlet for that, he closed the distance to the nearest hook, shifted the man up off his shoulder, and ran him through on it, then watched as the man screamed and jerked, and then went still except his arms, which hovered over the hook protruding out of his chest as he looked down at it in horror, like this wasn’t the some hundredth time this had happened to him. He looked up at Joey, and the look was hurt—not like he felt betrayed or something stupid, just kind of suffering, like he couldn’t take it. But a gen lit, and Joey pushed the thought away because it didn’t really matter, and turned and took off for it, cursing himself for not planning well, and nervous to do it right this time.

It was so hard to plan both to do well in the trial, _and_ get what he’d promised Quentin done. The whole ‘tell somebody then mori them’ had been a decent idea at first, but he’d just remembered he hadn’t burned a mori, so he’d get in huge trouble if he did that, and also like, it _had_ occurred to him en route to the nearest gen that if he killed someone right after asking them to trust him on something, they might change their mind, even if like, he told them why he was doing it. So he thought maybe not. Maybe do the trial normal, until at least one was sacrificed, and then when he had a little insurance as far as doing well for the Entity went, maybe _then_ grab one, and that seemed solid, so it’s what he did. The other two in the trial were the really fast redhead, and the big guy with the beard and a scar over his eye. Out of those, Joey figured one of the girls would be the easiest to get to listen, because they were small and would be easier to keep down long enough to listen, but he didn’t exactly have a plan. He just ran around the lab, chasing survivors, kicking gens.

The lab wasn’t a great trial area for him, but at least it wasn’t the best one for them either. He caught the redhead on a gen with the beard guy and snagged her off it right when they were about to light it, and the beard guy _did_ light it, but he got a good stab into his back before he could run off, and hooked the redhead. Got the professor again, and then caught the beard guy in a hallway after he saved the professor from his hook. And he thought about talking then, because he was doing pretty well, but he chickened out and hooked him instead, and then caught the redhead again, and had just stabbed her in the side and knocked her to the ground when the professor ran _right_ past and snagged the beard guy just before the sacrifice process really got going, so Joey left her downed and chased the professor until he got him, and then hooked him for a third time and watched the Entity run him through. When he made it back, the pretty girl with dreads was trying to help the redhead up, and Joey stabbed her in the shoulder, and she ran off, and he was feeling pretty good then, because that was one dead, one down, and the other two injured, plus only two gens lit so far, so he decided he’d tell the redhead. After all, she was already down and bleeding and shit, and she couldn’t run off and not listen.

But. When he stopped over her to do it, the girl glared up at him with contempt and fury, and he balked, suddenly overwhelmed and really sure she was never going to listen. _Come on. You promised him. Just—just do the thing, and it’ll be over. Come on._

He took a knee over her and bent down, knife leveled. “Listen, -”

The redhead sucked in a mouthful of the blood dripping down from a cut in her cheek and spat it in his face, and Joey jerked back, surprised and grossed out, and she kicked him in the groin, and he doubled over in pain, cursing and unable to move for a second.

“Fuck you! You piece of shi—” she’d started to kick him again, and Joey saw it coming and swiped down half-blindly and buried his knife in her leg, and she screamed and jerked back and tried to kick him with the other as he ripped it back out, but he was on her too fast, grabbing her by her shirt and slinging her over a shoulder. She cursed at him and kicked and pounded as he carried her to a hook, but he made it and slung her up, heart thudding. Not mad exactly, just surprised. It had been a while since any of them had done something like that. Usually they just didn’t talk at all anymore—not after the first few trials. _I guess because I talked first?_ he thought, glancing up at her overwhelmed as she screamed and jerked uncontrollably for a second with the hook through her, then caught the Entity’s talons as they burned into existence all around her and started trying to run her through.

Either way, whatever the fuck had made that happen, _she_ wasn’t gonna listen.

 _I’m running out of options,_ thought Joey nervously as he hurried away in search of gens or survivors. _Okay. Okay. No more fucking around. You’re doing really well—just. Next one you see, talk to, okay?_

And he saw the next one as he rounded the corner. It was the guy with the beard, trying to bandage the hole in his chest. He’d actually picked a pretty good place to do it too—no gens in the room, but close to one of the lit ones, which helped cover any noise. Joey had actually walked in here on accident, because he’d thought there was a door on the far side that would let him through towards another gen not too far off—a shortcut—but there wasn’t one. And it just wasn’t the beard guy’s lucky day.

The man saw him and his face paled, and he stumbled back, then turned and ran with the roll of bandages still in his hand. Joey took off after him like a flash, tapping into the Entity’s gift, and just missing a good slice as the man made it up some scaffolding and vaulted it back to the floor, but not loosing any ground as he vaulted it too and kept right on his heels. He caught up to the man again at the doorway to the hall and stabbed him in the back, right between his shoulder blades, and the man screamed in pain and fell forward, almost to the ground, barely catching himself, and Joey immediately heard two other heartbeats not far off and went out of his frenzy to better ignore them and keep focused in on his intended prey. The man with the beard barely made it to one of the little pallets in the hallway with them, and threw it down, trying to buy himself a little time, and turned to face Joey to watch him and see what he’d do, fear and dread in the lines of his face. That made Joey feel powerful, and cool, inspiring so much fear so easy in a guy so much bigger and older than himself—especially right after being kicked in the nuts and having blood spat in his face by some chick his own age—so he had a little fun with it. Stalking. Pacing back and forth by the pallet and boxes it was placed next to, trying to bait him and get him to panic and slide over the pallet back to this side, or to wait too long to do that when he eventually _did_ round the boxes, and give Joey time to catch him in the back, flipping his knife in his fingers expertly as he did to intimidate him. It worked, and he saw the guy shudder and take a step back as he acted like he was going to kick the pallet for a second. He was just fucking with him though, and he suddenly turned on his heel and bolted around the side of the boxes instead. The man saw him do it, and, like he’d expected, dashed forward and slid over the pallet to escape, but Joey turned on his heel the second the man started to, and was right back in front of it to catch him in the chest with the knife. The guy saw him coming, and tried to stop, but his momentum had been too strong, and Joey caught his shoulder with his left hand and dug the knife into his gut with his right as they guy’s feet hit the ground on the far side of the pallet, and the man cried out and jerked, and then slumped forward and went still for a second against him, just breathing shakily and all the fight in him gone.

Joey ripped the knife back out, and watched the man scream in agony and fall to the floor on his side and shudder there, jerking off and on and trying to clutch his gut and staunch the blood, and suddenly the sight in his head wasn’t this guy, it was Quentin, the night before, and how he’d looked after Joey had kicked him.

 _Shit. Shit._ He shook his head and forced himself to stop—to re-focus on what he was doing. _That’s not the same. That was outside a trial, this is in one. You’re just doing your job._

He took a knee by the bearded man, and the guy turned his head and looked up at Joey and shuddered again and his breathing sped up.

It was weird. Joey hadn’t done this so much before. Looking at survivors when they were downed, that was—at their faces. He didn’t like to mori so much, and usually just sacrificed, and everything was always so fast. Plus, there were so many of them and so many trials, it was hard to remember details of basically any. Usually he didn’t look at their faces at all. But this guy was different than the other two had been, and they’d been different from each other too. This one was looking at him like Quentin had last night, that second time he’d gotten freaked out, after he’d pulled a knife on him and threatened him, and he’d asked if Joey was only keeping him alive so he could have some fun killing him slowly. Scared, and sad too, which was a weird thing to go with this kind of scared. He tried to pull away from Joey the little he could, and shut his eyes and turned his head away too, bracing.

_Oh. I guess you think I’m gonna mori you._

He wasn’t though. He was going to talk. _And then what? How does that work? Do…Do I talk to him, and then like, hook him?_ He guessed so. Or. Well, he could also just leave him slugged, he guessed, and give one of the others a chance to come patch him up. Did he have to do that, for the guy to believe him?

Joey had spent too much time thinking, and the guy opened his eyes again to look up, confused and even more scared that he _hadn’t_ stabbed him yet. His eyes found Joey’s and he must have seen something in them, because he whispered, “Why?” with his voice shaking. Close to crying, with a stab wound through his gut. And Joey knew he meant, _“Why do you do this?”,_ not, “ _Why haven’t you stabbed me yet?”_ , and he didn’t have an answer, so he panicked, and grabbed him by the jacket and slung him over a shoulder as the man cried out in pain.

This one’s fucking voice. _What is it that feels so fucking weird sometimes about you?_ Joey asked himself desperately, looking for a hook. A part of him was saying, _“The fuck are you doing! Just talk to him! You’re gonna run out of survivors if you keep killing them all!”,_ but he was still kind of stuck on a survivor asking him _why_ today, and he didn’t want to talk to this one suddenly at all, and the whole talking to them period was overwhelming, and there was _so_ fucking much that could go wrong, a-and he’d said one of the girls, right? Because. Because they were smaller, and that meant they’d be less likely to—to _not_ stop being intimidated by him because he helped one of them out once, right? So. So this was just the right plan, was all, and he ran the man through a hook and didn’t stick around to hear him scream and start fighting the Entity.

The pretty girl must have come back to save the redhead sometime during all that when Joey wasn’t paying attention, because she wasn’t hooked anymore, but that was okay. Still three gens left, and two survivors on their last leg. Still three injured. He was doing okay. _You just have to fucking rip off the bandaid and do it, okay! If it’s the redhead again, then just, before you kneel down, be like, ‘Before you spit at me again, bitch, you should know I have a message for you from your friend Quentin!’ –Wait, no—that does make it sound like you killed him. Should I call her a bitch? It’s tough, and I need her to be scared of me, but I don’t want her so mad she won’t listen. What else would I call her then? I. I could just be like, ‘You’d better fucking listen’ in a harsh voice and not call her anything at all. That’s better, isn’t it? Right?_

A generator’s aura lit up yellow in his vision. Far from here, on the right—that meant both girls were on it together. _Perfect!_

Joey went into a frenzy with the Entity’s power and flooded himself with the speed and power that almost felt like an overdose of something _really_ powerful shot directly into his veins. It only took maybe fifteen seconds to make it to the gen like that, and as he started to get close, the yellow aura disappeared, and he saw two heartbeats flicker to life, one running for the beard guy, the other staying with the gen, and he went for the gen. If he fu—if something happened wrong again, it would be good to have backups to talk to. Just uhm, just in case. So. It was smarter. Plus, he needed to slow them down and kick the gen.

Bolting at top speed but feeling his short burst of energy wearing thin, Joey reached the hallway with the gen along the far wall, and he saw the girl with dreads look up and see him coming, but she didn’t let go.

 _She’s crazy,_ thought Joey. She was already injured, and sure the gen was close to lighting, but she’d need a _miracle_ to get it before he got there, and even if she did, she was going down with it. He made it another five feet before his frenzy wore off, and for a second there was the searing pain in his head that always went with that burst of power and the high it brought abruptly just shutting off, and he had to stop running and squeeze his eyes shut to deal, but he got them open again and was only fifteen feet away. She was close now—really close to lighting the gen, and she wasn’t looking at him. She was just focused, hands trembling a little, but giving her full attention to the gen. Joey tore off for her at top speed, and when he was three feet away, somehow, she got it. He saw her solder a little piece of wire in place so fast she burned her hand holding the battery powered little hot chunk of metal steady, and the gen _lit,_ and cursing himself for letting that happen, Joey lunged at her with all his might, and she ducked, and he _missed,_ again. Furious, Joey pinged off the gen and whirled around, and saw her racing down the hall, still clutching her bleeding shoulder. Whispering profanities under his breath, Joey took off after her like a launched crossbow bolt, and she heard him coming and glanced over her shoulder as he got close, and Joey saw her angle her feet to pivot again as he was right on top of her, and he anticipated it this time and shot out his left hand to catch her as she tried to spin on her heel and duck past, snatched onto her with a fistful of her hair, and flung her back as hard as he could.

The girl cried out in pain as he snagged her dreads, then again as she rammed into the floor of the lab where he’d flung her. She’d made it most of the way upright again by the time Joey closed the two feet between them, and she sensed him on top of her and turned to try and shield herself, and Joey grabbed her shoulders and flung her back again, hard, into the little entry area by one of the unpowered exit gates. The girl cried out as she hit the ground and he heard her head _crack_ against the cold metal floor. Whimpering in pain, she opened her eyes and started to push herself up onto an elbow.

“Stay down,” warned Joey, leveling his hunting knife at her.

The girl looked up at him in shocked horror at the sound of his voice and sucked in a breath and froze. Joey felt immensely relieved, and hesitated a second, trying to plan his next step, and distracted by the bruise on her forehead and the blood in her disheveled hair, and then she started to try to get up again.

“I said STAY THERE!” shouted Joey, taking a harsh step forward.

She flinched and shut her eyes for a second, then looked back up at him, shaking and almost hyperventilating. “W-what do you want?” she managed, soft voice trembling.

Joey took a step forward so he was right on top of her and started to bend down to kneel over her so he could show her the lighter, and the girl screamed and threw herself back away from him as far as she could just by shifting her bodyweight.

“Please don’t!” she cried. Joey had started to reach out to grab her so she wouldn’t go any farther away, and she saw him go to do it and squeezed her eyes shut and curled her little body up in on itself as much as she could, trembling and starting to cry harder. “Please, please don’t,” she begged, voice quiet now and choked, and full of misery and despair and terror, “Please. Please don’t touch me.”

 _…Touch you? I…_ It hit him suddenly what she meant, and he physically backpedaled a little off her, and stared at her balled up little form in horror. _Jesus Christ, does that happen? Or is she just—did I?_

He felt incredibly miserable suddenly, and worried, and had to kick himself mentally to snap out of it.

“No—No, I’m not gonna…” he started, sitting back up and starting to reach out for her again, and then hesitating, first on his gesture, then on word choice. The girl had her arms up over her head and was still shuddering and had her eyes shut tight. “Hurt you,” he tried, hesitantly, “I’m not even gonna stab you. I have to talk to you. It’s about your friend, Quentin.”

Her eyes opened immediately, and she looked back at him in horror, and stopped breathing for a moment.

“Quentin?” she whispered, eyes tearing back up.

“Yeah,” said Joey. He dug into his pocket and snagged the lighter and tossed it to her.

The girl jerked when an object came at her face, then focused on it as it came to rest a few inches away, and lowered her arms to pick it up and turn it over. He saw recognition flash across her face, and her eyes widen, and she looked back at him with dismay and fear. “What did you do to him?” she whispered, voice wavering and starting to silently cry again. “Why do you have this?”

“I got it off him in Ormond, when he—”

Joey had had no fucking idea the little girl could move so fast, but the second he said that she screamed in rage and flung herself at him out of nowhere, and he was so surprised he went over backwards with a cry and her on top, and suddenly he was being pummeled by tiny fists that fucking _hurt_ against his jaw, and the chick was digging her fingernails into his skin trying to kill him.

“You fucking bastard!” she sobbed in pain and fury, “I’ll kill you!”

He was kind of sure she _would,_ and horrified and totally lost because he’d had no idea the tiny pretty girl had it in her, but she was trying to kill him like Susie would have unarmed if she’d seen somebody attacking Julie.

“Stop!” he cried, trying to throw her off. She was clinging to him with a vengeance though, and an elbow caught him in the solar plexus and knocked the fucking wind out of him, and in desperation, he punched, hard, and caught her in the face.

The small girl cried out and fell back with the force of the blow against her cheekbone, and Joey was on her before she could make it up again, snagging her wrists and pinning her arms back with his own while she struggled beneath him. She screamed and tried to kick him, but she didn’t have a good enough angle to do that with much force, and Joey ignored it.

“I said stop!” he ordered frantically, “I didn’t kill him! He gave it to me to show to you!”

The girl stopped, breathing shakily, and looked up at him in a painful mixture of surprise and mistrust and hope. _At least she’s listening,_ thought Joey nervously.

“I’m gonna let go, okay?” said Joey in a warning tone, “ _Don’t_ punch me.”

He let go, and she stayed on her back where she’d been—didn’t even move her arms down from above her head. Just kept breathing too fast and kept her eyes on him as he straightened back up onto his knees.

“I didn’t kill him,” said Joey again, “He’s alive. I got this when he showed up in Ormond. You know he had a run-in with the Deathslinger?”

The girl nodded quickly, a little more hope in her expression again, and absolutely fixed on what he was saying.

“Okay, well, he got shot,” said Joey.

He saw horror flood her features, and he was really afraid she was about to start crying again, so he hurriedly added, “—Not fatally! He’s okay. He was just hurt bad, okay?”

“…Are you sure?” she asked in a little whisper after a second, like she was afraid he was going to hit her for speaking, “H-he’s not gonna die?”

Joey nodded. “I’m pretty sure. He wasn’t doing so good when I found him, but he’s doing a lot better now.”

“Found him?” echoed the girl. She moved her arms then and started to sit up a little, watching him nervously, but this time he let her, since she seemed like she was going to stay and listen, and he wasn’t so afraid she’d just try to run off, and she pushed herself up onto an elbow and stayed there.

“Yeah,” said Joey quietly, trying to convey _‘Also please keep it down’_ in his tone of voice, “Look—I have a lot I have to tell you, and not much time, so shut up and listen, okay?”

The girl nodded quickly, eyes big and worried, and still clearly _very_ scared of him, and giving him her complete attention.

“The realms all shifted before he could get out,” said Joey hurriedly, super relieved she seemed to be taking this so well now, “He got shot, but got away from the cowboy, and there weren’t a lot of options, so he ran to Ormond—to our place—to try and get away. I found him fucked up by the fireplace-“ He hesitated for a second, frantically trying to decide how much truth to tell, since she was going to hear it eventually, even though that was fucking stupid, and he really shouldn’t care— _didn’t_ care—at all what this survivor thought. “And I decided to help him,” picked Joey.

She stared at him wide-eyed, like this was the most unexpected plot-twist in history.

 _What,_ thought Joey self-consciously, _It’s not that weird! I’m not a monster. It’s not my job to actually, like, permanently murder the guy, so why would I?_

“I patched him up, and I’m letting him hide out in Ormond until the realms change. We aren’t by you guys either, so he can’t go back yet, or he’d walk through another killer realm and get killed,” forged on Joey, trying to ignore his extreme anxiety and seem self-assured and in control, “But this is **_very_** important, okay? I am the **only** member of Legion that knows about this, you got that?” He paused to let her answer.

There was a little delay where she just kept staring, before she registered the desire for a visible response, and then she quickly nodded.

“Good. You _can’t_ mention any of this, okay?” continued Joey, trying hard to convey the importance of this in his tone, “ _Ever._ Even once it’s over. If the Entity finds out I helped one of you, I might get in trouble—I _definitely_ will for talking to you.” _Shit! Shit—now she has blackmail on you! Why did you tell her that? Now she’ll threaten you forever!_ “And if you try to fuck me over by telling it on purpose to get me punished,” he added, flicking the knife towards her menacingly and leaning in close, voice low and aggressive. The girl flinched and shut her eyes for an instant on instinct and sunk low to the ground and started to tremble again. “I will **make** you sorry, you get it? I mean in every trial with me for the rest of your life.”

“Mmmhmm,” she managed in a whimper, eyes shut and nodding quickly.

 _Oh good,_ thought Joey, massively relieved, _I’m glad it was this one I talked to. She’s really easy to scare._ He withdrew the knife again, and she opened her eyes and watched him nervously, still shuddering a little. “Okay. Good,” said Joey, “You can’t tell the other Legion members either, or mention any of this to them. They don’t know, and if they find out? …I don’t know if I can keep them from killing Quentin, you got it?”

She nodded fervently.

 _Great. Okay, sweet. This is going really well._ “Alright then,” said Joey, pleased, “He wanted me to stop you and say all this, because he would afraid you’d send out search parties and get yourselves killed looking. He wanted to tell you all not to do that, and that he’s just fine, so just stay where you are, and he’ll be back in a little bit. All you have to do is nothing, and as soon as Ormond is next to you guys again, he’s free to go, and this’ll all be over.”

For a second, he thought she was going to nod, or say something maybe, but then her expression changed a little, and she became worried suddenly. She turned the little lighter around in her hand and looked at the dried blood on it that Joey hadn’t even noticed, then back up at him, and shakily said, “Y…You have him, or you wouldn’t have this, but is he…” she had to struggle not to cry again and choked on what she was trying to say and took a second before desperately asking him, “Can you prove to me he’s really still alive? A-and. And that he’s safe there, and it’s not you who doesn’t want us to come looking?”

 _OH! Right._ “Yes,” said Joey, proud of himself, “He told me to tell you that ‘Meg’s next episode of Welcome to Hell with Meg Thomas is on realm fashion,’ whatever the hell that means. He said you’d know, and it—”

He didn’t get the rest out, because the girl’s eyes filled up with tears, and she let out a happy gasp, and then started crying again, clinging to the little lighter like it was a lost pet or something, and Joey had no idea what to do about that.

_Why the fuck is she crying? That…it’s what he told me to say. I didn’t get it wrong, did I? And he wouldn’t—_

The girl looked back up at him, trying to swallow her tears enough to get a word out, finally managing, “Thank you.”

_What._

She was still crying, and staring at him like before, but she didn’t look scared now. She looked…happy. She was. Smiling at him. _What the fuck. I. I guess because her friend is okay?_

For a second, the girl just kind of doubled over crying, and then she straightened up to a sitting position and looked back at him again. “I’ll. I’ll tell everybody. You can. C-can you please tell him we’re all okay? We’ve gone—w-we’ve gone out looking, but nobody’s been hurt yet, and I’ll stop them when I get home, and we’ll be okay too, so he just—he just needs to get better out there while he waits, and we’ll see him soon?”

“…Sure,” said Joey after a second, considering how damaging being nice might prove to his future image as a hunter, and deciding this girl was pretty easy to scare, so it was probably okay. Plus, she was so little and miserable and scared, and there was a huge bruise forming on her cheek from where he’d punched her, and he’d…Joey had actually never punched a girl before. Even in the realm. It just. Well, like, h-he didn’t know. He’d killed them, so that really shouldn’t matter at all, because killing was a lot worse, but like. His mom had always been really big on that. On how so many girls grew up expecting to get hit by their boyfriend because their dad hit their mom, and how bad it was to do that, and it wasn’t okay to act like that was how it was going to be and had always been, and that had been one of her like, top things since forever. Don’t hit a girl—you’re better than that—it’s not okay. So he’d…actually never done it until just now, not ever. Not even in trials. And it felt super weird. He hadn’t, like—he hadn’t done it because he was pissed. He’d been freaked out she was clawing at his face and trying to kill him. _It’s not any different,_ he told himself, trying not to feel guilty about how bad the bruise looked and how pitiful she was all curled up on the ground bleeding, _She’s not going to think of it as any different from anything else in a trial, so it’s okay. You were just defending yourself anyway. You weren’t being shitty to her cause you could. You’ve never done that just cause._

“OH,” he remembered suddenly, breaking from that train of thought completely, “Dwight—the other survivor with Quentin when he got shot—is he okay? I mean, uh,” he hurried to tone down the amount of interest in his voice, “I told Quentin this once I would ask for him, and find out if his friend was still alive. So. Is he?”

The girl nodded quickly. “He’s alive. He’s not doing so well, and he’s in a lot of pain, but we’re doing everything we can, and he’s gonna be okay. Somehow the bolt seems like it missed all his organs. Which, seems kind of impossible, so you should tell Quentin his ability probably saved his life. A-and that, Dwight’s been really worried, and sorry, and he’s gonna be so relieved he’s okay. He tried to get up and go look for him himself, even hurt as bad as he is, and we had to get somebody make him stay down. Can you tell him that?” she added much more meekly, seeming to suddenly remember she was talking to her murderer and not a casual friend.

“I can,” said Joey with a nod.

She gave him a scared little smile. It felt so weird to get smiled at during a trial.

 _So. That’s everything, right?_ Joey asked himself, _I got them to quit looking, I found out about Dwight. I think that was it. Okay, great._

Joey started to stand up.

“W-wait,” said the girl, starting to sit up more herself, and then hesitating, nervous.

Joey paused and glanced down at her.

“Uhm,” she managed in a whisper, “Y…You’re r-really gonna let him go?”

He gave a nod.

She looked confused by that, and thought quickly. “Do we…Is he trading you something? I-if he made a deal, can I…” she glanced up at him and hesitated, anxious, then looked down at the ground and forged on, shoulders scrunched together and locked up, “C-can I know, and, a-and maybe…uhm. I-I could help him pay it, whatever it is?” She looked back up then, tearfully, and waited in fear for a response.

Taken aback, Joey just stared at her for a second, and her expression fell, afraid she’d said the wrong thing.

“W-whatever it is,” she added hurriedly, looking away from him at the floor again, “I’ll do it. I have a lot of supplies, a-and stuff. I wouldn’t want him to-to be the only one who gets hurt, i-if he’s in—in trouble.”

“…Nooo,” said Joey very slowly, thinking about all of the truly horrifying offers Quentin hade made him just an hour or so ago, and feeling a little queasy about the eerie similarity. It made him feel…almost _gross_ that both of him had so readily assumed he would _want_ that. _I mean, yeah, I want you to be scared of me,_ thought Joey, _But like…terrifying badass scary. Superpowered, ninja, action something kind of scary. Not…fuckin…_ Fuckin whatever this was. _Normal kind of scary,_ thought Joey somewhere deep inside his head, _Actual kind of scary, like people who kill other people are._ He shut that down _real_ quick and tried to refocus on the girl. “Unless the others find out he’s in Ormond, he’s not in trouble. Except that he got a little injured. I’m not trading him something, though. I’m just helping him.”

The girl looked back at him in surprise, and studied him for a few seconds in something like wonder, then glanced down and sniffed. Off in the lab, a generator lit, and Joey turned to look, agitated again suddenly. _Fuck—only one left. I might have to hook this one right now to get back on track._

When he glanced back, she was still looking at him with that expression though, like Quentin had had almost. Not touched, maybe, but surprised, and a nice, deep kind. Like somebody had just saved her life.

The idea of hooking somebody looking at him like that suddenly got _real_ hard to picture, and really uncomfortable to think about.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” said the girl nervously, “But thank you.” She teared up again, and glanced away. “I. We thought he was gonna be hurt, really bad, maybe dead. And we weren’t sure we were gonna be able to save him in time. I was _so_ scared we wouldn’t.” She looked back up at him, having a little trouble talking again through the emotion in her voice and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much I—we…” The girl stopped and fought to get her emotions under control, then said, “I don’t know how to repay you.”

 _Repay?_ Her _and_ Quentin. _Fucking survivors are surreal,_ thought Joey, trying to process this.

“B-but I’ll think of something,” she hurried to add, almost happy again, “I promise. Thank you. Thank you for helping him.”

Uncomfortable and a little something else too, Joey gave a nod. _Shit,_ she was pretty. _You **cannot** be thinking that so much about a girl you’re gonna kill. It’s kinda fucked up. _Somehow it had been less fucked up before he talked to her, back when she was more the vague idea of a girl than a real person, but now it was making him feel super weird.

 _I have had way too much to think about in way too few hours. I can’t deal with this,_ thought Joey.

“I’m gonna have to go now,” said Joey, glancing back towards the lab, “Look. This isn’t gonna change anything, you got that?” He paused for a response, and the girl looked serious and some of the blood drained from her face and it got ashy, but she nodded. “It’s right back to trials as usual. I’m gonna hunt you same as before, and do everything exactly the same.”

“Okay,” whispered the girl. He saw her tear up, but she went still and looked down and just kind of hung her head.

 _Oh shit,_ realized Joey with an emotion he didn’t recognize but a _really_ bad one, _She’s just going to let me hook her._

She wasn’t even going to run or fight. Or anything. He was **_100%_** certain, looking at her in the moment, that if he slung her over a shoulder, she wouldn’t even fight him on the way to a hook. That if he just fucking reached over and took her _hand_ even, she would just trail after and let him do it. _I could blackmail you,_ thought Joey with absolutely no emotion tied to the words. Simple realization. _I could tell you I changed my mind, and if you want Quentin alive, you all all have to just let me kill you until he gets home, and you’d do it, I bet. I bet all of you would—I **know** you would. Because it wouldn’t even be a contest—this is nothing to losing him for good. I could just get you to let me kill you._

_What the fuck?_

He thought the last one hopelessly, finally finding an emotion to accompany the thoughts.

That was too messed up, even for here. Sure—okay, they hunted, and that was just life, and it was how it had to be, but _fuck._ It would be _so_ easy to extort them, and they’d do it. He knew they would. And how fucked was that? How fucked was that…

Joey looked back down at her and took in the blood from the stab wound in her shoulder that was still leaking down her arm, and the bruise on her face from a promise that he’d kept to his mom somehow even here that he’d finally just broken, and the worn pink blouse and torn pale jeans that used to be nice and little loafers, and her pretty hair and glasses, and how small she was compared to him, and how easy it always would have been to beat her in a fight, powers or no. How little chance she’d ever had going up against him.

“Except for this time,” said Joey, trying to sound less scary, and trying to kill the awful feeling in his heart that had come with looking down at her.

The girl looked up at him in surprise.

“This time, I’m gonna let you go. I’m gonna run off and find that last gen,” said Joey, “But this is a one-time deal. Next time I see you this trial, it’s back to normal, and I’m gonna hunt you the same as anybody, okay?”

She nodded hesitantly, still staring at him, stunned.

A generator lit up yellow in his periphery. _Great! That means they weren’t on one this whole time. Must have taken a minute to find one—or maybe they stopped to heal. **And** I know where they both are._

“And uh,” he remembered, glancing back at the girl, “You don’t have to let me catch you, okay?”

The surprise on her face deepened.

“It’s back to _normal,_ right?” said Joey, “Fair odds. I hunt as well as I can, you run as well as you can, and what happens…happens. Yeah? I’m not gonna…make your friend pay if I don’t get a good hunt next time or something. You get it?”

She forgot for a second she was supposed to give an answer, and then hurriedly nodded.

“And you can make sure your friends all get it too?” checked Joey.

“I will,” promised the girl.

“Good. Then good luck,” said Joey, giving her a little nod and turning to go.

“Wait!” called the girl.

Joey glanced back at her, kind of anxious to get to that gen, but willing to hesitate for a few more seconds for her.

“What’s your name?” asked the girl.

 _FUCK, you too?_ he thought in dismay. “I-I can’t tell you that.” He hadn’t meant to stutter, but she’d looked so hopeful. She’d been looking at him like she liked him. Like he was a fucking friend, and it had caught him off guard, and kind of fucked him up. _Oh, what does it matter? Quentin’s gonna tell everybody anyway._ Damn it, she looked so downcast when he said that too. “Well. Survivors aren’t supposed to know,” he added hurriedly, glancing away, “But uh. If you promise not to tell any of the others.” He glanced back and she gave a serious nod, big eyes still fixed on him. “It’s Joey,” he finished, and then he turned and tore off down the hall.

* * *

The rest of the trial didn’t take long. He caught the last two survivors on a gen together across the lab, and got stabs in on them both, then chased the older guy with the beard through the whole damn lab. They went through one door not that far in, and he saw the pretty girl with dreads digging through a box, and she looked up and saw him, and froze, and he knew he should have gone after her, because she was easy prey backed into a corner like that, but he was already _in_ a chase, and he just really fucking didn’t _want_ to, so he’d stayed on the older dude and eventually finally caught up to him and downed him and thrown him up on a hook. It wasn’t so bad, because the pretty girl with dreads wouldn’t possibly have been able to tell them shit before he’d started chasing him, and so to the other two survivors it would still be like nothing was different at all, and he just tried not to think about it, and didn’t look when the guy died and the Entity took his body. Too bad he couldn’t not fucking hear it too.

Unfortunately for him, the redhead lit the last gen while he was hooking the beard guy, and he caught her at a door, and stabbed her, but she was so fucking fast she made it clear to the other side of the building to the far exit before he could catch her, and he was left slashing at nothing as she shot through into safety towards their campfire.

Joey assumed that was going to be it. This door had been open, which meant the pretty girl had opened it, and since she wasn’t in here, she must have already run out, and with the redhead gone, the trial was over, and he’d be back to Ormond any minute, so he just kind of relaxed and waited for it to happen.

“Joey?’

His eyes shot open and he whipped around to see the pretty girl with dreads standing like, four feet off, over by one of the little brick walls halfway through the entry area. _Shit. I didn’t see her at all!_

Damn, she was either _really_ good at holding perfectly still, or he was incredibly off his game right now, and either way, this looked kind of embarrassing. Also, technically he was between her and the door. His odds of stabbing her or grabbing her well enough she wouldn’t be able to struggle free and make it four feet past him and out to safety were, uhhhh, _slim,_ for sure, but it was possible, and probably worth a shot. He raised his knife automatically.

“W-wait! Wait, please,” she said, holding her hands up, and he realized she was holding a medkit in one of them now, “I-I found this,” she hurried to add, stepping a little nearer and thrusting the box towards him, “In one of the boxes—it’s not the best, but it’s got a lot bandages in it a-and a sling, and I put my needle and thread and bandages in too, and some Burdock I had. I-I have better stuff, but not on me. I’ll try to bring some in trials now in case it’s you again, i-if that’s okay?” she added hurriedly, “to-to give to Quentin, to help him get better. I know he can’t have had much on him.”

Joey stared at her for a second, and then lowered the knife, feeling strange, and made a _come on then_ motion to her with his left hand, and she came, holding the little medkit out to him. He took it gently, and glanced over it curiously, then lowered it to his side.

“I’ll give it to him. It’ll help. We were kind of running low on bandages,” he said, offering a smile before he could remember not to, because it had felt so natural in the moment.

To his surprise, she smiled back, looking grateful, and nodded quickly. She hurried over two steps closer to the exit then, then froze and glanced at Joey, but he just indicated the exit with his head.

“You might as well,” said Joey, “You’re getting out whether I stab you or not, right? Just go. It sounds like you guys have had a pretty rough day already anyway.”

“Thank you,” said the girl like she really meant it, stepping the last two steps to the barrier and then turning and smiling at him. It was a soft smile. Heartfelt, and open and genuine, and it made his heart speed up to see it. It felt good. It made him feel warmer inside, and proud of the things he’d done in the last twelve hours. He used to feel like this a lot.

“Sure,” said Joey, again with a little nod.

“Can…” She hesitated, and glanced down anxiously for a second, then back up at him. “…I ask you why you’re doing this?” she said finally, meeting his gaze with a look like she was very afraid she’d maybe just said the wrong thing.

Joey broke eye contact for just a second to think, then met her gaze. “Because it wasn’t a trial,” he said with surety, “It’s not our job to fuck you up outside them, so I didn’t.”

She watched him for a moment, then glanced down and smiled softly, then looked back up, and said, “Than thank you for wanting to help him.”

“—That’s not what I-” started Joey, trying to backpedal, but she didn’t seem to have _realized_ that was an insult, so he stopped in the hopes she wouldn’t realize it at all. She was waiting for him to finish saying _something_ though, so he cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, you better go. Pass on your message quick, and I’ll give this to your friend and tell him the other guy’s alive, and then we’re all back to normal.” It was very important she understand that last point.

The girl nodded. “Really,” she said again, meeting his gaze, “Thank you.”

This was like her fifth time thanking him, and he really didn’t know how to respond, and he couldn’t just keep saying ‘Sure’ forever.

“I’m. Claudette, by the way,” she added, losing force with every word and looking very anxious, “Y-you might not want to know. But. You told me your name, so I—I thought. …Thank you. …I.” She hesitated again, and her eyes misted up, which was _beyond_ confusing to Joey, and then she looked back over at him and whispered, “I was so afraid,” while choking back tears, “… That he was dead. I didn’t…I didn’t think there was anybody else good out there.” And she looked into his face like he’d given her hope again, and smiled with tears in her eyes, as if she were saying goodbye to a dear friend at the airport, then stepped across the barrier, and as he turned to watch, she vanished, and he was left alone, feeling very strange, and trying to figure that out.

 _…Wow,_ thought Joey after a second, blinking in the darkness as the trial began to dissipate around him, _Somebody was happy to see me. For real. I think I almost could have made a friend. If things were different here. I did for a second._

And he’d made her happy.

It felt… _really_ good. That couldn’t last, but—God, it had been so long. He’d felt really shitty about how swollen her cheek had been, but she’d just been glad he’d saved her friend, and it had all felt okay. He’d done a good job, and she’d been happy. He missed that.

 _I wonder if I could make Quentin feel better too,_ he thought, considering the weight of the medkit in his hand. Probably, right? _I bet I could think of something really good to do,_ he figured, a little excited for the first time in a while. Because he actually had a project he cared about.

He’d really missed this feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always really enjoyed writing Joey, and for this segment I really wanted to explore some of the cognitive dissonance that would have to accompany his choices, and take a fair look towards both his brutality as killer, and his detached way of making that easier for himself. It's always so fascinating to look at this kind of violence from killer POV, because it's just so easy to make it seem normal, or okay, or justified. It's all about the narrator's version of events, and the lens it gets philtered through (just like life, haha). Also it's Asexual Awareness Week, so I really wanted to get some good Claudette content out there!  
> Joey is an interesting person, in that he's got a lot of likable and sympathetic qualities, but he's also a fairly weak-willed individual, and pretty likely to be cowardly in situations of pressure, and chose self-perseverance over helping someone else if it's a choice. Nice, because if there is no cost, he'll usually try to be nice, but unfortunately nice and good are not exactly the same trait. They're uh, they're actually a pretty far cry from each other, even if they visually have some similar qualities. This is an interesting set of traits to be stuck in the realm with, though, because you get someone too weak-willed to get hurt not to enact horrible violence on someone else to save their own skin, but also someone who wouldn't like doing that. Which, in turn, gives you two options, really. If you're going to do the things, because you're too scared not to, you can either face you're enacting terrible abuse and torture on innocent people to protect yourself, and feel guilt and shame and self-loathing at the weight of what you're choosing to do, or you can find a way to ignore and/or justify the reality to yourself, so you don't have to feel bad. And unfortunately, Joey is of the persuasion to do the latter, and escape pain entirely. Which is about the worst choice, ethically speaking, to make. It's really easy though, unfortunately, to distance yourself from or justify about /anything/. Nobody really starts out going "I'm the bad guy;" they find reasons they can say what they did is okay, and believe in those, and then keep going, and psychologically, it is /so/ easy to that, and so hard to turn around and come back from. "It's not my fault, I didn't have a choice, doing something else wouldn't help anybody so it's okay, they'd do the same, I like this, it's fun, it's fair, I'm at risk too." There's a lot you can say to make even murder feel just, and it's really, /really/ goddamn easy. Which is what's so dangerous about starting down that path.  
> /Fortunately/, in spite of the truly awful shit he's done, Joey is also very far from devoid of his humanity, and there's a lot good about him that's still alive. It takes a while to change completely, usually, and that can be as good a thing as it can be a bad one. I think he's a very miserable person, who genuinely was inclined to be nice and kind and fun, and liked being liked and making other people have a good time, who has given up on his nature entirely in order to secure his safety, and is miserable like that, but doesn't really quite realize that, because he's become so excellent at lying to himself. He really lucked out getting Claudette here, because she's one of the most kind and empathetic and forgiving survivors in the entire realm, so nat 20 on sheer luck right there for my boy. And it was certainly good for him, because psychologically speaking it's a lot harder to justify acts of violence on someone you have spoken to vs a complete stranger, and much, /much/ harder to hurt someone who likes or is being kind/friendly/nice/thankful towards you than it is someone who is angry at or hates you. Which is a fair way to feel for sure, but uh, still probably for the best all around in the moment.
> 
> Quentin's ability Vigil, while only kind of middle of the road in-game, would I think be one of /the/ most invaluable skills in a real DbD world. While it does nothing to repair minor wounds and stop bleeding, it is an AOE heal that is meant to keep you /alive/. It cures exhaustion, dangerous hemorrhaging, bone breaks, and toxins/effects that can kill someone just by being close to Quentin (and works on Quentin himself), and persists for a few seconds even after he is out of range. Luckily for Dwight, this kept him from suffering organ damage somebody couldn't fix after being shot by the Deathslinger. Unluckily for him, Vigil can do nothing for his less life-threatening wounds, and it's going to be a slow and painful couple of weeks of really shitty trials.
> 
> Hey! Thank for reading, and for the comments! It gave me the dopamine to do another chapter much more quickly this time. >u> Hope you enjoy this one as well, and thank you again. <3 Happy Ace Awareness Week!


	6. Uncertainty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still feverish and with no way to properly process his situation, Quentin tries his best to deal with exhaustion, injury, and everything happening to him. Especially Joey.

Obviously, Quentin had not been going to sleep.

That wasn’t on the table. Even if somehow he’d woken up before getting skewered for real, or if that really had all been just a normal kind of nightmare, it was _not_ worth the risk. He didn’t know what would happen.

Actually, since the day he’d gotten in the realm, Quentin had… _never_ gone to sleep.

Well, until today.

Maybe that was just paranoia. It…i-it probably was, he knew, he knew. The other survivors slept all the time, and none of them had ever had Krueger creep into their dreams and hurt them, so why _would_ he think it’d happen to him for real if he ever let himself pass out too? Not once, not in all the…God, it must have been a couple years now, right? And not once in all that time had Krueger attacked someone in their dreams outside a trial. So, really, it was probably foolish, and a waste of monumental effort, and stupid, but. But what if it wasn’t?

And honestly, that ‘what if?’ was all Quentin _needed_ to make him never, ever take the risk of going to sleep to find out.

Because even though everybody was fine sleeping, Quentin had just…he had _always_ known, always had this deep, awful, unshakable feeling that if he ever did really fall asleep?

Freddy would get him.

And God, even if someone woke him up in time, he _couldn’t_ deal with that being true for sure. With having to _really_ know it. Not right now, not with all this. Fuck—Even if he survived the first attack, if that started to happen? If he started to have to fear sleeping for _real_? God, it sounded like so much hell. So much worse than what he’d been doing for years now. And he was already so far _beyond_ tired.

The fear of that was preying on him. Even now, alone in a little room, knowing that he’d _just_ been asleep—not unconscious, not feverish, but truly asleep, and there had been no fatal attack, he was just…God, he was still _so_ sure it would happen.

He didn’t know how it worked! What if it was like…Unlocking a door? What if—if being asleep, what if that meant that Freddy could get into his head like before, and attack him in his dreams, and the reason it hadn’t happened was just that he hadn’t noticed! Hadn’t been trying the door right then. What if next time it was different? What if next time he didn’t wake back up?

So.

There couldn’t _be_ next time.

And he knew that, he did, but _God,_ it was hell trying to stay awake.

He felt like shit. So much shit. He was exhausted, his chest throbbed, his wrists and ankles hurt, he was getting stiff and sore from sitting like this, and he was growing a splitting headache. _Everything_ hurt; even his stomach was fucked up with bruises. Quentin had been beat to shit before, sure, but this was probably the most extended period of time he’d been and stayed beat to shit this badly. And, like any human body experiencing a great deal of pain and an intense need to shut down so it could focus on repairs, his was _begging_ him to go to sleep, and he wanted to—he wanted to shut out the pain, and to feel better, and to just—just fucking be able to turn reality off for a goddamn minute even! He was desperate for that! But. He couldn’t. He couldn’t take the risk. So he stayed where he was, a little propped up, feeling miserable, struggling to think and focus and find ways to force his miserable body _not_ to pass back out.

In reality, doing that at all probably would have been impossible. The physical toll had been huge, and bodies just straight shut down when they had to. But here, in the realm, you didn’t have to sleep. Didn’t have to eat, didn’t have to lots of things. Didn’t mean you never got hungry, or thirsty, or tired. Just that, if you _didn’t_ do those things, you weren’t going to die from it. At least, as far as he could figure, because _he_ hadn’t slept once—well, okay, apparently just now just once—but aside from this one little nap, not once in the last what must be a couple of years now.

 _…How old am I?_ wondered Quentin, flexing his bound hands to have something to look at. He had no idea at all. He had no idea how long it had been. _…Definitely a few years, right? So…I must be at least eighteen now. Huh._

He used to think that would be a thing to look forward to. But. It had just happened, when he wasn’t looking, and passed on like everything else.

Quentin wasn’t really sure what he looked like, come to think of it. I mean, it wasn’t like he had _no_ idea. There were reflective surfaces. Metal carts in the Institute, chunks of glass in the MacMillan Estate, the little pools of water in the Yamaoka gardens. But it wasn’t like he’d ever really had time to care and get a good long look during any of those trials, you know? And it _sure_ wasn’t like they had mirrors. Of course—he’d been in pictures. Sometimes when Meg did Welcome to Hell with Meg Thomas, he’d be close enough to her that she’d flip the camera to shoot them, and he must have seen himself on camera then. Definitely had later, watching episodes. But he was usually just kind of in the middle of a group, and the picture was small. So. He knew, kind of, but just kind of. Maybe he had been trying not to pay attention…

 _I guess it doesn’t matter,_ he thought ruefully, leaning back against the pillow. It obviously didn’t, but it was something to think about at least. _Eighteen? Does that feel right?_ he wondered, circling back in his head. He didn’t think it did. _Nineteen?_ Shit—had he been here—

Quentin stopped, and felt his heart miss a beat.

“Whoa. Something’s really wrong with you, huh buddy?” he tried to tell himself comfortingly in a nearly inaudible whisper.

Of course he wasn’t nineteen. He must be older than that, probably a lot, because Laurie, back when she’d almost left them, she’d told them when she was from, and he’d found out that they _weren’t_ a bunch of teenagers and young adults from 2010 like he was, or 2011, or 2012. Or 13, or 14, or fuck. _Fuck._ Kate and Jeff had been the last two. Been from 20 _18._ God. _Eight_ years? And that was last he _knew._ It could have been more now. Fuck. How had he taken so long to remember that? He knew that. He knew he must be older. Sure Quentin didn’t really think he was twenty-four, although he wished he was, because it was the time he’d lost out there and the age he _should_ have been, but _fuck,_ how the hell had it taken him so long to remember it was the age he was supposed to be?

 _Seriously, how fucked up did I get?_ he thought nervously, trying to feel his head for wounds with his wrists bound.

Oh my GOD, it felt so weird to be tied up and _not_ feverishly trying with everything he had to rip out of the bonds. He wanted to—he was _itching_ to. It was making him feel unbelievably sick to be tied up at all, because his stupid _fucking_ brain kept panicking, kept trying to make him remember the last time he’d been tied up, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that, and flip itself into the emotional state he’d needed to survive what had gone on in all of them, and he _couldn’t_ make it stop.

 _Fuck it. I could try,_ he thought despairingly, _I don’t really know if he’ll keep his word. I don’t know why I’m trusting him. I should try to get free. If he comes back and tries to hurt me, at least I’ll have a little bit of a fighting chance. If he doesn’t, maybe he’ll get mad, but it’s not like I’ll have **actually** done something to hurt him. I could get free, but not leave, so no one sees me and gets him in trouble._

Could that work? Did it make sense? … _fuck. Fuck, I don’t know! I can’t tell. I’m so tired._ He was so fucking tired he wanted to cry. …It was _so_ fucking hard to focus…

 _No, no, no. Come on. No falling asleep. Think about something. Anything. How old are you?_ How old? He _should_ be twenty-four. _Shit, or even older_. And he had no idea how old he was for real. How aging even worked in the realm. Fuck, that was so unfair. If the world was going to move on, shouldn’t he have at least gotten his own eight years to go along with it? What if he got out, and his Dad was 100? Or Nancy was twice his age now? What if people were dead? What if there wasn’t a…a home to go back to. _…Like Laurie…_

Quentin held up his bound hands and stared at the coarse rope and the way it bit into his skin and then twisted his wrists the little he could to open up his palms and try to find some way to read his age on them. There was blood still staining his own fingers from trying to keep a little of it inside himself before he’d passed out. On his palms, his arms. So much blood. There was probably blood all over him.

How long had Joey been gone?

 _‘Joey’?_ he echoed himself.

God. It all felt so wrong. He was overwhelmingly dizzy for some reason then, and had to squeeze his eyes shut and focus on breathing just to not throw up, and he was suddenly _really_ terrified of throwing up, because it wasn’t like there was anywhere to _do_ that. He could barely even bend over. If he puked, at best it would just get on the side of his couch, but it wasn’t like he’d be able to get the taste out of his mouth or even really wipe his lips clean with something, and he was already _so_ miserable, he _really_ didn’t want to lie on a couch, tied up, with vomit all over him for hours.

 _Haven’t I suffered enough?_ he thought pleadingly like a little prayer, _For like, the next two hours anyway? Please? I don’t know how much more I can take right now. I could... I could **really** use a break._

God, he hoped Dwight was alright. _Please take care of Dwight too. First, I mean. Or. I don’t know if that matters. Probably both at once is easy, but you know what I mean. Just. Please, please let him be okay._ He sighed and forced his eyes open even though the dizziness wasn’t gone, and it made the urge to vomit worse, because the temptation to sleep had been getting far too strong without them. _And, please don’t let the Legion guy be lying,_ he added as a hopeless afterthought, _I know he probably is. Or. Or, I think I know that. But I’m so tired, and I’m not thinking right, and I need to sleep so bad, but I can’t, and I just. I just… I could really, really use just a little bit of help?_

The act felt comforting, and as he shifted away from it his thoughts wandered with it to the Legion and the past hour and followed that thread, until suddenly he was jerking awake, surprised to find he’d been starting to slump over.

“Fuck! Fuck,” he whispered miserably, slamming his head back against the arm of the couch, trying to wake back up more completely with pain. And it hurt, it hurt a _lot,_ but then he was just exhausted _and_ hurting, and the unfairness of having absolutely nothing he could do but sit and suffer no matter what he tried made his eyes sting for a second. “Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. _Please._ ”

The first hour in here alone had been the easiest, because at one point the Legion had been talking to each other downstairs, and he hadn’t been able to tell much of what they said, but having something to try to listen to helped a lot. When the voices had stopped, it had started getting hard, but he’d thought it _couldn’t_ last that long, could it? A really, really long normal trial might run an hour or so. Most were more like 45 minutes. Longer than that, and you got kind of antsy something really bad was going on with your missing friends. Longer than an hour and a half? That was serious shit. Two hours? A really, _really_ bad sign. And it fucking _felt_ to Quentin like it had been two goddamn hours since that trial had started by now, and staying awake was painful, and miserable, and how much longer could it take?

“Buddy,” he whispered tiredly, trying to study the details of the little room for something to do, “You don’t know that’s gonna help you. He might not come back in here right away, especially if the others want to talk to him, and even if he does, that might not help you out so much.”

Fuck. Right. He didn’t know what would happen.

But _God,_ something had to.

Quentin was half awake and halfway through the process of slumping to the side and jerking awake again when finally, then, there was noise.

Shaking his head to clear it the little he could in the sick, exhausted fog, Quentin tried to focus on that. Downstairs. _It’s just footsteps,_ he thought, heart sinking a little, _That could be any of them._

Whoever it was, was uh, was coming this way fast though, he was starting to realize.

Nervous, Quentin turned as much as he could towards the doorway, and. And then there wasn’t anything else he could _do._ No readying, no planning. And that realization made him lock up and blank out for a second, eyes fixed on the hanging blanket that served as a door, but not totally seeing even that, and then the curtain was being tugged back, and Joey was ducking through out of breath.

Quentin sucked in a breath, overwhelmingly relieved at the sight of him, even with his mask on, and then felt the nervousness creep back up his shoulder blades and stay. Because. Well, that had been the best possible Legion member to come walking through the doorway, but it didn’t change the fact that it was a Legion member, and today was kind of a terrifying day he had no idea what to expect from.

“Hey!” said Joey in a slightly hushed voice as he let the curtain drop, “You’re awake already? Wait—did you not sleep at all?”

“Uhm… No,” managed Quentin, confused and distracted by the fact he had a bundle of clothes that were _definitely_ his jacket and shirt in his arms, “I...”

“I thought you were gonna rest?” said Joey, moving over and dropping his armload in the easy chair, then dragging it over so it was right beside the couch.

“I…did,” said Quentin falteringly, and then, thinking of something good since he didn’t really want to bring up the fact he _never_ slept, just in case there was some way Joey might—he didn’t know— _use_ it against him, “I—I’m not supposed to except when you’re here, right—? You said—”

“Yeah-yeah,” agreed Joey with a nod, picking up his armload again and climbing into the chair, “I guess I just thought you would on accident. You look exhausted.”

 _I am exhausted, _thought Quentin, but he didn’t say it. “You uhm…were you able to talk to somebody?” he asked instead.

“Oh—! Yes,” said Joey. He straightened up and focused. “I took the trial, talked to one of your friends, and told them you’re here—she said she’ll make sure nobody gets hurt looking for you. And your friend Dwight is okay.”

Quentin sucked in another breath, trying to make himself really believe that, and so overwhelmed and relieved at the news. “Really?”

Joey nodded. “He’s hurt, but she said your…ability? Healed him?”

 _Thank God. Thank you—it must have worked, then. I did it right! Thank God._ Dwight was okay. He was really, really okay. That was such a weight off his shoulders. And if he’d made it back to camp, Quentin knew they’d take good care of him. He smiled.

“…So…You can do…healing stuff, then?” asked Joey, who, Quentin realized when he glanced up, had been hoping he’d tell him this on his own and gotten tired of waiting. “Does that mean it’s like—how the redhead can heal herself of almost anything right when gates go up and just fuckin book back towards them? And the like, blonde girl with big hunks of glass in her pockets can read our aura a lot of the time? You can heal people?”

“Uh. Uhm…” said Quentin, caught off-guard, and trying to guess with too little brain power and emotional processing left if there was some way answering this was a trap, and it might make all of Legion gun for him in the future so he wouldn’t be around to help much. _Fuck it, I guess. If they do, they do, and at least that means it’s…me and not. Not somebody else, right?_ “Yeah,” he decided cautiously. It was really hard to read Joey’s expression now that he had the mask back on. And it was also putting every single danger sense he had on edge. _God I wish he’d take that back off._ “I uh,” he started up again, trying to forge through, “I can uhm—n-not like, _heal-_ heal—I can’t do anything at all for cuts and bruises. But uh, big stuff? Life-threatening stuff? Or really, really urgent? Like uh, like getting drugged, or a bleeding from an artery, or a broken bone, organ failure? I can heal that. I’ve got like a…aura, or, something. People who are near me heal, and I can heal myself like that too. Doesn’t do much for most of the wounds we get in a trial, but uh, really handy against one of the guys with a chainsaw. Or, I guess, if you get shot through the guts by the Deathslinger.”

“Whoa,” said Joey, eyes big and interested under the mask, “That’s pretty cool. I had no idea.”

Quentin shrugged nervously, and considered asking him not to target him specifically now that he knew he could do that, but gave up on the idea and said nothing. It seemed almost more dangerous to put the idea there in the first place, anyway.

Joey thought for a second, watching him, then looked to the side, furrowed his brow and cocked his head, then glanced back, expression very clearly different now even in just the tiny bit Quentin could see past the cloth. “…Wait, ‘drugged’? Who drugs you? That’s a thing too?”

“Uh…Yeah. Mostly the Clown,” said Quentin carefully, “But uh, sometimes the Huntress will have toxins on her hatchets, and I’ve been drugged by the Pig a lot too.”

“…The ‘Clown’??” asked Joey.

Quentin stared back. “Y. You’ve _never_ seen the Clown?”

“W—he’s been here a long time?” asked Joey in confusion.

“Y-w—yes! Longer than you! By like, a pretty good margin!” answered Quentin, mind trying desperately to pitch some reason this could be happening to him.

“ _Really_?” asked Joey.

“Yeah, he—there’s an old chapel he seems to be by more often than anything else, but he moves around?” tried Quentin, “He’s got a big cart-house pulled by a horse with three eyes that looks like it’s in terrible agony, and he lives in that thing?”

“OH!” said Joey, that clearly clicking, “Oh, I’ve seen that! A bunch of times. He lives in the cart?”

“Yeah, are you saying he _never_ comes out of it?” asked Quentin in disbelief.

“ _I’ve_ never seen him,” agreed Joey with deep interest, “I’ve seen the horse—even thought about going over to pet it, or try to steal it a couple times. But there’s some weird energy coming off that place, so I never have. I’ve heard someone in there before, though. Talking, or laughing, or—I-I don’t even know what. But. Loud.”

“Yeah, that’s a good instinct,” said Quentin adamantly, “Don’t go in there. Ever.”

Joey blinked at him.

_Jesus, am I really giving a killer advice about not going near another killer to stay safe? For all I know, they’re all under orders to never hurt each other and it wouldn’t even be a problem. Plus, I really shouldn’t care._

“Why? What would happen?” asked Joey, “Is he like, the strongest of us you think?”

As soon as Joey’d said that, though, Quentin knew that was wrong, and he _did_ care, and he felt pretty right about it. No matter how fucked up the Legion was, and how many awful things he’d seen them to do his friends and himself, and how much they probably deserved in exchange for that, the Clown didn’t mean just getting killed, and he really didn’t think even they deserved what that _did_ mean. Honestly, he didn’t think he could wish that on his worst enemy, and he could wish a _fucking lot_ on his worst enemy. He’d rather leave that justice to hell though, not the fucked up guy in the cart.

And the Legion? No. Especially not this one—not after he’d helped him. And seemed…God, he didn’t know, but something. Something pretty human left inside, and okay.

 _You really have no idea what could happen if you got near him, though,_ he thought, feeling overwhelmingly sick in the one second he’d let his mind wander into the answer to the question he’d been asked. “No,” managed Quentin, “I don’t think he’s the strongest by a long shot. I think any of you four could take him. You’re faster _and_ stronger. But he wouldn’t get you in a fight. He’d get you in a trap, or…when you were sleeping, or something. It wouldn’t be a fight. You’d probably drink something laced, and wake up tied to a chair.”

Joey craned his neck back a little in a kind of _Wait, what the fuck?_ reaction to that, and gaped at him again. “…What?”

“I…You probably don’t really want to know,” said Quentin, glancing away and trying to change the subject, “Just. Don’t ever go try to steal the horse. Stay away from him. I’d stay away from the Doctor, the Pig, Ghostface, the Cannibal, and the Nightmare too, for sure. _Especially_ the Nightmare. Even as a killer, with whatever killer rules you guys have, I don’t think all of you would obey them. Just. …Take my word for it. _Don’t_ fuck around and find out.”

“Fuck around and—?” Joey thought for a second, then glanced over at him again. “…Do. Do you guys get tortured in Clown trials?”

He’d almost sounded like he didn’t want to ask it, and _definitely_ like he didn’t know the answer, and somehow even though it shouldn’t have, the question surprised Quentin a lot, and he looked back up.

It must have been pretty evident on his face how taken aback he was, because Joey hurriedly added a, “I—you were worried I was gonna do that to you. And then.” He stopped, and glanced at the floor for a second. “Uhm. The. I stopped one of your friends, t-to talk to them, like you wanted. And I…” He glanced up at Quentin again, and then back down. “I think she thought…I was gonna…Do something worse than kill her.”

“You…didn’t…?” said Quentin, just a little bit question in the statement, because the amount of guilt he could see in Joey’s eyes was kind of freaking him out.

Joey’s head whipped around to stare at him the instant he said it. “No! No—of course not! I don’t _do_ that! I wouldn’t!”

The amount of horror and indignation should have been comical, considering Quentin had suffered torture-levels of pain being thrown on the ground and having his guts ripped out by this guy before, and Joey had sure _seemed_ to be enjoying _that_ awful shit at the time, but it wasn’t. It was just immensely relieving.

He did feel a little attacked by the intensity of the denial, though, since he was pretty nervous about pissing this guy off period right now, so he shrunk back against the couch the little he could and tried to raise his bound hands a little appeasingly. “Okay—I’m. I’m sorry. I—. I don’t really know what any of you are like. I’m just,” he tried nervously.

Joey’s expression changed instantly, and he drew back a little himself, seeming only just then aware of how close and how threatening he was being. “No. I—it’s okay,” said Joey much more calmly, “Sorry. You’re having a pretty rough 24 hours.”

Quentin nodded carefully.

“I didn’t, though,” said Joey, “I just stopped her to talk. –I even let her go after.”

It had been an afterthought, but one he’d seemed pretty proud about, and Quentin perked up, surprised. “Really?”

Joey gave a nod. “Yeah. Seemed fair. OH!”

Quickly, he took the bloodied jacket and shirt—which Quentin had been kind of hoping and expecting to be given—and dropped them on the floor, which would have been immensely confusing except there was a medkit underneath them, which Joey shoved at him, and that was so distracting Quentin forgot about his stuff at all.

“Your friend gave me this,” said Joey, Quentin was pretty sure in his vaguely eternally shell-shocked state, grinning under the mask. He could not tell if that worried him or put him more at ease even a little bit. “For you,” said Joey, like he was confused Quentin hadn’t taken it.

 _How am I supposed to grab that with my hands like this?_ thought Quentin, glancing at his bound wrists. Joey followed his gaze, looked embarrassed, and drew the kit back a little.

“She uh,” he said, clearly trying to recover, “To—she said that it would help. It’s mostly bandages, and some uh…Burdak?” He opened the case and presented the contents Quentin.

 _Oh. Burdock—that means,_ “Claudette?” asked Quentin hopefully, glancing from the kit up to Joey, “W-was the girl you talked to uh, really short and uh, pretty, with a pink sh—”

“Yeah, yeah—she told me her name,” said Joey excitedly, “That was the one.”

 _Wow_ _you lucked out. That’s like…the most **astronomically** good luck humanly possible. I think out of the entire survivor group, she’d be by far the most likely to listen to **and** believe you. Apparently my luck has been shit the past couple years because every single drop of it I had has been going **right** to fucking Joey here instead. Still—that’s good for me too this time, I guess. And she’d know for real if Dwight was okay, so that means he really must be!_

“That’s lucky,” said Quentin out loud, “She’s our best medic, and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” Joey was nodding. _You could tell that after like three minutes?_ “She had a medkit?”

“Found one,” said Joey, “After I talked to her. And gave it to me, to give to you. Said the uh—the plant thing will help you too.”

“Yeah. Uhm…Burdock can help with pain a little, and it’s really good for helping wounds heal, and not get infected,” said Quentin a little slowly. He felt like he’d been playing catch-up on his own life all day, and the feeling was _not_ getting better. _Fuck_ his head was foggy. He wanted to go to sleep. This all felt so…surreal, and— _NO! No, no, no, NO. No sleep! What was that? Not here, not now, not ever. Snap out of it!_

Trying to force himself to refocus, he gave his head a slow shake to wake back up and then glanced back at Joey. “It’s uh…it’s more especially good for burns,” he finished, struggling to remember where he’d left off and hoping he remembered right. _God_ he felt lightheaded. And sick… _Fuck, I’m so tired of feeling like shit. I’m so tired… And…_ “But. Uh…It’s also good for cuts. That’s a really…a—a good thing to have.”

Joey tilted his head a little. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Quentin as convincingly as he could, “I’m just…uh. Tired and in pain. I’m okay.”

“Uhm,” said Joey after a second like he hadn’t totally believed it, but was willing to let it slide, “…Well, as far as today goes, I can’t stay here much longer.”

Quentin gave him a questioning look.

“The others,” said Joey, gesturing vaguely behind him, “They peaced out while I was in a trial, but even if they’re sleeping or chilling, I take more than like another hour and a half, and they’re gonna _know_ something’s up. So they might like, just, walk in here.”

There had been something weird and too fast about the way he’d said ‘walk in here,’ Quentin thought, but he was way too tired to be sure or have any idea what the fuck it could mean.

“Oh,” he managed through the exhaustion, “So. You’re…I’ll be here alone until…tonight or something?”

Joey nodded. “Yeah. Susie’s gonna…be up and about, a lot today. She uh—said so. Has some stuff planned. So, stay here, stay quiet, and it’ll all be okay. I’ll try to keep an eye out in case you fall asleep and scream or something, but hopefully that won’t happen.”

It _definitely_ wasn’t going to, because Quentin never slept and he was damn sure gonna sit on this couch awake for hours and suffer, but he didn’t say so.

“But before then,” continued Joey, “I was thinking I could put the plant stuff on your cuts? To help with the pain? There should be time for that.”

Quentin stopped what he’d been trudging through thinking about and stared at him.

“…What?” said Joey uncomfortably after a second, shifting in his seat.

Even though he knew he should say something, Quentin just couldn’t respond at all. It was surreal to get that offer—I mean—he _knew_ Joey had been the one to patch him up, like, factually he knew that, but he’d been unconscious for all of it. And…The idea of getting _bandaged_ again, and this particular guy touching the hole through his gut? While he was tied up and stuck in his place, a-and God, God, this was all _so_ weird, and it was still just really hard to understand it was happening. Or _why,_ or even what for real was. He was awake and coherent enough to know he _wasn’t_ thinking totally right, but not coherent enough to know how off he was, and that was kind of a horrible way to feel. He didn’t even have a decent read on how much he could trust his own judgement right now. And at the same time, it was just…surprising, that like, that the Legion—Joey—had thought about that and offered, or, or cared about it all—if he did. And it was just way too much to process. **God,** he wanted to pass out and just get to take a break from this all for a while. _No. No, come on,_ he pleaded internally, _You’re better than this. Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. Come on. Focus. You haven’t slept in eight years, you can go another couple days. Come on._

“I…What?” said Joey again, glancing behind himself for some reason like Quentin might be staring at someone back there, and not him, “Did I do something?” Something must have clicked to him the second he said that, because his eyes widened, and he hurriedly reached up and snatched off his mask, then glanced down at it and shoved it in his hoodie pocket before giving Quentin a nervous look. “Sorry—I forgot I was wearing it.”

 _You think that’s gonna make me feel all better,_ thought Quentin dissociatively, still just staring at Joey, _Because I told you before you were less scary with it off. You think that’s why I’m nervous around you._ God this was surreal. What world was Joey living in? Because it did _not_ feel like the same one he was in. But fuck, the most surreal part of it all was that while the mask being off _did_ _not at all_ make his anxiety and the crippling feeling of looming terror working to get its hooks in that came with being tied up in a killer’s house go away, somehow it actually _was_ a little better. It _actually_ was. Not enough to feel safe, but enough to be noticeable, and he kind of hated that, because he felt like it must say something pretty shitty about himself he didn’t have the mental capacity to suss out at this energy level, but, fuck.

“…You don’t actually have a beard,” said Quentin.

Immediately, he wanted to scream at himself and kick himself in the face, which was impossible. _Why the **fuck** did I say that!! _He knew it was because he was tired and kind of broken, but fuck! He hadn’t even been _thinking_ that—at least in a way he was aware of!! Where the fuck had it come from??

It was Joey’s turn to stare. “What?”

“Y…Uh,” Quentin felt his face heat up and wanted to die, “Y-your—uh. Face paint. It looked.”

They just stared at each other.

“OH,” said Joey suddenly in dismay, “Oh—shit!” He threw his forearm up to his face, and rubbed, and the black whatever it had been he was using around his eyes and also to basically draw on a beard that Quentin had _definitely_ thought was a real one in the hazy memories he had of seeing Joey’s earlier started to smudge wildly, but not come off.

Quentin was suddenly struggling very hard not to begin laughing. He could feel his face twitching. Joey kept trying to get the stuff off blind with his sleeve, but every single attempt was just making it worse and spreading the stuff everywhere like mud.

“I uh,” stammered Joey as he went, glancing at Quentin between desperate bids to get the stuff off his face, “Uhm—it’s. I forget about that. We don’t take the masks off much.”

“That’s not working,” informed Quentin gently.

“It’s not?” asked Joey, pausing mid terrible swipe with his sleeve.

“It’s just kinda everywhere now,” said Quentin.

Joey muttered something Quentin thought had probably been _‘Shit,’_ and started digging in the medkit for a reflective surface, seemed to have an epiphany, and unsheathed his knife to try and get a look.

Quentin didn’t realize he had smiled until he was starting to stop doing it, and the feeling was surreal, but at least he felt less anxious than he had a few seconds ago. “Why do you do that, anyway?” he asked with some genuine curiosity, while Joey tried—with not complete, but more moderate and at least partial success—to get the stuff off of himself.

“Uh,” said Joey, glancing over at him and looking a little kind of flushed and sweaty for some reason, “I. It’s because it looks pretty real, right?”

“Uhm.” Somehow that was the _last_ answer Quentin had expected. “I…I mean. It’s dark, and I…can’t see that well in here unless someone’s up close, so. Kind of...”

“From a distance,” agreed Joey like that was great.

Quentin stared at him.

“It’s a technique,” explained Joey hurriedly as he got the last of a noticeable shape off, and was left with just dark smudges here and there all over his whole face now, which he didn’t seem in a hurry to get rid of. “So, if anybody ever rips my mask off or something, they only _think_ they know what I look like. It was for before, mostly,” he added with a lot less conviction after a second, expression faltering, “I uh—I guess just. I’m used to doing it, and it made sense, right? We wear masks, but mine comes off even easier than the other Legion’s, so I thought if a survivor ever did that, at least they still wouldn’t really recognize my face.”

“…Why?” asked Quentin, staring blankly.

“…Because,” said Joey haltingly, “I…You know. I mean. Would _you_ want somebody to see your face? If you were…” He gestured at the knife.

“…You mean you feel bad about it?” asked Quentin.

Joey gave him a look like this was the wildest thing anyone had said in the last forty-eight hours, which Quentin knew for absolutely certain it was not.

“No—No,” said Joey, expression and tone a hard read suddenly, “Not that, I. It’s just smarter, you know? I dunno,” he added with a shrug, digging his hands into his pockets and glancing down.

… _Well, I have no idea what to make of any of that,_ thought Quentin.

Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that.

“…Uhm,” tried Quentin when the silence got unbearable, “Thanks. For, uh, —it’s nice I _actually_ have an idea what you look like now.”

Joey glanced up clearly with an expression on his face like he thought it was probably some kind of dig, and when he realized it wasn’t, seemed extremely relieved and much less defensive.

“Yeah, sure,” said Joey in an intense attempt to sound casual, “Sorry for confusing you like that.”

“Uhm. So, you said it’ll be about an hour and a half before your friends come looking for you?” asked Quentin, because there was no way he could respond to that.

“Yeah! Right—so, uh, if you want some help, we gotta go quick,” said Joey, refocusing easily on the former conversation.

That had kind of been phrased as a question about whether Quentin wanted his wounds re-dressed or not, but instead of answering he balked at the thought again. It would be good—maybe necessary to get the wounds cleaned, and he knew it, and God, anything that could help with the pain? It was so much to handle alone—a-and he didn’t know if infection was really a worry in this place, outside of being attacked by the Plague, but he did _not_ want to find out the fun way. Still, thought, he just…

_…It’s gonna be agony either way. Pick emotional agony and bite the bullet. You know it’s the smart thing to do. That’ll be over when it’s over. Actual wound’s gonna hurt for days and days and days._

“Yeah,” exhaled Quentin, glancing at the floor, “I’d appreciate that.”

“Okay,” said Joey, sounding a little pleased maybe, which Quentin found unnerving, because he couldn’t possibly imagine a ‘why?’ that was good.

“Do you know how?” he asked tiredly, looking up.

Joey had been setting supplies out in order in the case, but he stopped. “Uhm. Yeah—I mean, I already did,” he said with not as much assurance in his voice as his words suggested, gesturing to Quentin’s chest.

“No-no, I mean, uhm, the burdock,” said Quentin.

“Oh,” said Joey, looking relieved, “No. I don’t. You don’t eat it?”

Quentin did not laugh. But it was a monumental effort not to make his face twitch either. “No.”

“Oh, then…?” said Joey.

“Uh. You make a poultice with it. That’s a little dry probably, from being stored so long,” said Quentin, “so, usually the plant is fine alone, but with that you might need some water. Do you…have water?”

“I…have snow,” said Joey, thinking it through, “I could melt some. I’m sure we’ve got a clean cup down there somewhere.”

“Great,” said Quentin, relieved, “Probably a few drops with the burdock root. It’s already ground, so it’s about ready to go, but put it in a container and mash it up with a few drops of water since it’s dried out—just enough so it sticks together, like a…a thick paste, more or less. Don’t put so much water in that it gets like soup, or it’ll just run everywhere. Think like…mashed peas, or really thick mud kind of? –Mashed potatoes, there we go—that’s a real thing: mashed potato kind of thickness. Once you have the paste, you just take that, and slather it on a wound. There’s not a whole lot in the kit though, so, probably it’s only gonna be enough to go on the stomach and back wounds. Maybe not, though. I’ve never been great at eyeballing poultice mixes,” he added, praying that would be the case, because sure, his gut was agony, but his arm hurt quite a bit too.

Joey gave a sincere nod, listening carefully to all the instructions. “Got it. I’ll go get that. You use a little like—bowl and stick or something to mash it, right? Like in the movies?”

Quentin opened his mouth and couldn’t think of how to reply to that for a second, then managed, “Uh…yeah. A…Mortar and pestle. But, you can use whatever you have.”

Taking all of this incredibly seriously and at his word, Joey gave a nod. “Okay. You need anything else?”

Quentin thought. “Uhm…maybe a little extra water? In case anything has to get cleaned out of the wounds?” Eugh, he regretted saying that as soon as the words were out, because he did _not_ want to think about it, but the thought was there now, and anyway, it was true.

“Gotcha,” said Joey, hopping up, “I’ll be right back. Or—water’s gonna take maybe a minute to boil, but back real soon.”

And then he was just gone, vaulting over the chair arm and tearing out the door like he was on a timed mission, which, well, Quentin guessed in the most technical of ways, he was, and Quentin was alone again then, staring at the entryway where he’d been.

Sighing, Quentin used his time to lean back and try to mentally prepare himself for what was coming. This was gonna suck.

Out of the corner of his eye, something caught light unexpectedly, and when Quentin turned his head to look, his breath caught.

He’d left it.

He’d left it, on the arm of the chair, behind the raised lid of the medkit. Was the wickedly curved little hunting knife that had ripped through Quentin’s ribcage so many times before. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

 _Shit. Shit—is this a test? Is—did he do that on purpose to see if he can trust me? Is it a fucking mind game? Or…_ It could just be an honest mistake. A-a lucky break. Out of sight, out of mind, and Joey seemed pretty scattered right now. God, it was _so_ close to him. It would hurt, but he could sit up, and lean that far, and grab it without falling over, he was pretty sure. Joey didn’t know he’d left it, Joey wouldn’t know he had it, and it would be _really_ easy to fight back with that element of surprise. _You just need one good hit,_ his instincts told him, _You get that, get ready, hands below this quilt, and when he leans in close to undo a bandage, all you need is one good thrust up between his ribs and it’s over. Just one hit. And then he won’t be able to hurt you—_

What?

Quentin shook himself a little, a deeply unsettling feeling lowering over him all of a sudden. _No. No, I don’t want to hurt him. I definitely don’t want to **kill** him! He…I…Fuck. _Fuck. What _was_ the right thing to do? It couldn’t…If he could actually take out a killer, then that…for all of them, it’d be— _Quentin, stop—you’re not thinking straight. You’re fucked up, and freaking out because you’re hurt, and you’re tied up, and the only times this has ever happened to you have been really bad. And in every one of them, that would absolutely have been the correct thing to do, so your body wants to do it, but that’s not right this time! Just stop. Just try to calm down._

But his mind was flipping out. It was throwing fucking memory after memory at him in rapid succession of being stabbed or hooked or killed by Joey in the past, of the way it had felt to be flung onto the floor and kicked while injured just hours ago, the way he’d felt watching Joey kill friends he hadn’t been able to save. God, he had memories of him smiling, he was sure—you could never see the Legion’s faces, but you could see their eyes, and you could see in someone’s eyes sometimes, if they were smiling. He remembered…Remembered….Fuck—fuck, and i-it was mixing with other stuff, with older, and newer, and worse stuff—with hours and hours of trials that just wouldn’t end with the Nightmare, tied to something, the only times in his life before this he’d ever been tied to something, and, and so long ago there were such old memories of dark and a small room and a door that wasn’t a door, and they— _No. No, no, no, no, no!—Please, please stop! Stop! —You have to calm down! You have to think! It’s not the same—it’s not! That’s not what’s happening. It’s not. It isn’t. It won’t. You’re okay. You’re okay. He’s not gonna torture you—he said—_

But ‘he said’ was such an unbearable piece of evidence to be trusting in with so many memories of the guy gleefully ripping his guts out like some fucking inhuman monster with no sense of empathy, or even pity, or humanity at all, and he…

Quentin shut his eyes and found his necklace and closed trembling fingers around it until his fingernails dug into his palms.

It was _such_ a surreal situation. It was _such_ a surreal situation. He didn’t know _what_ to do. He didn’t even know what would have been the _right_ thing, forget the safe one, or the smart one. And he was so, so tired. He wanted to cry, and to throw up, and scream. And his mind was trying to help—trying to spur him into action by making him feel the reality of the situation, but god _damn_ it he _was fucking feeling it,_ and it was not helping! It was making everything worse! _I can’t fucking breathe. I can’t breathe; I can’t move. I just. I need to stay still, and wait for this to ride itself out, and I’ll be okay. Just try to stay calm. Try to let it pass. Come on. It’ll be okay. You’re not touching that knife. B-because—right? Fuck. Just stay still. Wait this out. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay. Come one. Try to breathe. You can breathe. Nothing’s happening. He’s not gonna hurt you. It’s all—_

“Hey, got the stuff.”

_Fuck._

Quentin kept his eyes shut for a few seconds, praying something would make this situation better than it was, because he was all out of road, and then finally, he forced himself to open his eyes. His stupid worthless body was starting to shake with the intensity of its desire to get him to react in _any_ way that would protect it, and he had been miserable before, but he was something beyond that he had no name for wounded and exhausted and struggling with fighting it back.

“Whoa. Are you okay?” asked Joey, looking genuinely concerned, or not, or who knew. Quentin didn’t. He couldn’t trust himself or his judgment. He couldn’t fucking trust anything. It would probably be easier to just quit trying at all.

_Come on. Come on. It’s okay. Just let it pass. Let it pass._

“I feel nauseous,” he managed quietly, because he had to say something, or Joey would ask again.

“You look…really pale,” said Joey, sitting back down slower and placing his handful of containers on the ground.

Quentin gave a kind of head movement to acknowledge that, because he didn’t think he could talk anymore.

“Uhm. Here,” said Joey, picking up a little coffee mug with a faded lodge logo on it of a mountain and holding it out carefully to him, “I brought you some too—to drink. I know you don’t _need_ food or drink here, but I thought it might make you feel better. You look like maybe you could use some.”

For a moment, Quentin forgot moving was a possible human act at all, and then he slowly reached out and took the mug in shaky, bound hands and brought it back close and looked down at it. Then started to cry.

“Whoa—what happened?” asked Joey with what sounded so much like worry in his tone, shifting to lean closer, “Is it—are you hurting a lot?”

Quentin couldn’t answer. He just stared into the cup at the little ripples in the water from his trembling hands.

Joey leaned closer. “Quentin?”

“…I don’t understand,” whispered Quentin, unable to look up from the cup, “why you’re doing this.”

“’Doing this’? Doing what?” asked Joey, confused and a little anxious now, “I-I was just...”

“Helping me,” whispered Quentin, eyes still on the water, trying to dissociate from the way his body felt.

“I…told you,” said Joey.

Quentin shook his head. Finally, he made himself turn and look at Joey. Tired and strained beyond belief. Sick, broken. “I don’t understand what you want?”

Joey stared at him for a second. Looking genuinely taken aback, mouth a little open. “…Oh you’re still scared of me,” he said quietly then like an exhale.

Quentin just looked back at him.

“Oh,” said Joey again, thinking suddenly, and looking troubled, “…Oh. Uhm, okay, look,” Joey continued after a second, looking up, “I’m gonna—” He touched his knife sheath on the strap he wore across his shoulder, and felt it empty, and alarm flickered across his face, and Quentin’s eyes automatically went to where the knife lay out of sight behind the medkit, and Joey saw, and followed his gaze, tilted the top of the medkit down, and saw the knife. Stared blankly at it for a second, and then at Quentin, and Quentin knew that he knew, then. That somehow in the look he must be able to tell that even if he hadn’t done anything, he had thought about taking that knife and having it and killing him, and Quentin felt immensely guilty and immensely terrified, and had no way to confront either feeling at all or make them better, so he just weathered them and tried to distance himself and feel nothing and failed, and looked back at Joey with no way to get out of any of it at all.

Joey kept watching him for a few seconds, then carefully, he reached over and picked up the knife and considered it. He slid it back into place on the shoulder-strap sheath, and then unclipped the whole belt and took it off, stood up and moved to the far corner of the room near the window and laid it down on top of a box, then came back without it, and sat down again in the chair.

“See?” said Joey hesitantly after a second, glancing up and over at him like now he was nervous to do it too, but somehow still sounding almost a little hopeful, “I didn’t hurt you; you didn’t hurt me. I’m not so bad.”

Quentin looked back down at the cup of water immediately. Afraid to look back up.

“I’m…not _mad_ at you,” tried Joey after a second, “if that’s what you think. Thank you, for not trying something on me like you promised you wouldn’t. I’m not pissed you didn’t call me to tell me I left it behind. I’d…probably be nervous around that knife too if I was you.”

Quentin glanced back over hesitantly. Joey was smiling at him a little, encouragingly, and he looked happy to see Quentin glance up.

“…I don’t understand what’s going on,” said Quentin finally, because he was sick with that truth, “I-I don’t know why you’re helping me. I know you said you would, and I want to believe you. I want to. But, I…I don’t know why you haven’t just killed me.” He had managed to stop crying a while ago, but he was struggling not to go back to it again now.

Joey seemed to take that question seriously, and thought for a second, looking troubled, then met his gaze again. “I’m sorry,” he offered, “I don’t know what to say to you that could get you to trust me. I don’t like that I make you so miserable all the time when I’m not even trying to. I…guess I could go away, give you space, if that’d be better.”

It wouldn’t, because then he’d be at so much higher risk of falling asleep, and Quentin knew it, and that knowledge was almost too much to take right now.

“I uhm…” offered Joey after a second when Quentin didn’t say anything, glancing back at the medkit, then up at him again, “Look, we don’t have a whole lot of time. I’ll leave you alone if you want, but I think we should use this stuff. You’ll feel better, and if your body feels better, _you’ll_ probably feel a lot better too. And…we can talk about normal stuff, so you can try not to think about any of this while we do. You said you’d tell me a little about yourself, right?”

“Yeah,” whispered Quentin, looking back at the cup.

Joey gave a nod. “Okay. You want to try that?”

Quentin thought about that for a second. It helped. A lot more than he would have thought possible. –Not exactly the stuff Joey was saying—although that wasn’t bad—but, the being asked, and getting to choose, instead of this being either an inescapability, or something he had to fight for a shot at avoiding at all. It made it feel different.

He gave a nod.

“Okay,” said Joey, sounding relieved. He scooted the chair even closer until it was pressed up against the couch and he could reach easily without making Quentin move, and then dug around and found some scissors in the kit. “Can you sit up a little? I can help, if you need it.”

Help was probably smart, and he knew it, but Quentin shook his head and just gave Joey the cup before trying to force himself to straighten up more on his own, which, without anything to hold onto, was a job for stomach muscles and _immensely painful,_ and he was about a second away from collapsing back against the end of the couch in a pile of failed effort when Joey caught his hands with his own gently and he suddenly had a fulcrum to leverage himself up using arm strength instead, and with immense effort, he made it.

Making it up meant losing the blankets again though, and Quentin was instantly freezing. Doing his best to shiver as little as possible, he glanced at Joey once as the guy let go of his hands, then away, working as hard as he could not to think about anything at all.

“Okay?” checked Joey. Quentin didn’t really give that an answer, but Joey took his expression as a yes and picked up the scissors in the kit. “Alright then. Harpoon wound first, yeah? In case we run out of stuff, since that’s the really bad one.”

Quentin gave another nod and didn’t look at him.

“I’m uh, pretty new at some of this, so, if I do anything wrong, or like, poke you with the scissors, just tell me,” said Joey, which wasn’t the most reassuring sentence, but Quentin barely even registered it, “Or if the bandage gets stuck on something and hurt coming off or anything.”

“Okay,” managed Quentin.

He felt Joey’s hand on his back then, and felt a sudden and intense urge to scream and whip around and try to snatch the scissors and ram them into the side of his throat, and rode it out with his eyes shut. There was the sound of the scissors cutting a few times, and some of the bandages around his chest and shoulder felt looser.

“So, uh, you feeling up to telling me anything about you?” asked Joey, trying hard to sound friendly.

“Like what?” asked Quentin, opening his eyes and staring straight ahead at nothing, just focusing on breathing.

“I don’t know,” said Joey, then with more conviction, “—Where are you from?”

“Ohio,” answered Quentin.

“American,” said Joey with a little nod as he cut a few more bits of bandage free, and then unwound some pieces.

“You’re not?” asked Quentin, surprised, and then he kicked himself, remembering Jeff was from this same place the lodge was, and it was in Alberta, “Wait, that’s dumb. You’re Canadian.”

“Wait, how’d you know?” asked Joey, sounding genuinely surprised.

“The lodge,” answered Quentin, “Well—I guess I didn’t _know—_ you could be _from_ anywhere, and just have gone missing here. But the lodge is in Alberta. Ormond.”

“Yeah,” said Joey, sounding genuinely impressed, “How did you figure that out, though? Have you been there?”

“No,” said Quentin, glancing over at the other guy as Joey got the rest of the old bandages free and drew back a bit, “One of the other survivors is from there. Jeff.”

“’Jeff?’” echoed Joey with some interest, tilting his head, “Which one is he?”

“He’s one of the older adults? Brown hair, big beard, scar over one of his eyes?” said Quentin, “…I’m afraid to look. Is it bad?”

Joey looked down at the torso wound and then back at him and grimaced a little. “It’s not pretty, but it’s not awful, if that helps.”

Quentin looked down. That had actually been a pretty accurate assessment. The wound was red and irritated, but it _was_ sewn shut, Like Joey had said, and it was holding. It was actually a massive relief, because he’d only had his fragmented memories of bleeding out to picture before, and this felt a lot more like a wound you could live through than the picture he’d had living in his head.

“So, what now? Use the water to wash off the surface a little?” asked Joey, glancing up at him.

“Yeah,” said Quentin, trying not to think about how that was going to feel, “—Just. Please be gentle. Even when I’m not touching it, it hurts like hell.”

Joey gave a nod and dunked a chunk of bandages in one of the little mugs he’d brought with him, reached for his back, then hesitated. “It’s kind of warm,” warned Joey, which was actually a huge relief, because Quentin had been expecting it to be just below snow temperature.

He felt the wet cloth on the skin of his back then, and pain _shoot_ upwards from the point of contact with the injury, and sucked in a pained breath and tried to fight the urge to scream.

“Sorry,” said Joey, drawing the cloth back again, “I hurt you?”

“It’s gonna hurt,” said Quentin through gritted teeth, trying to brace himself for round two, “Just don’t stop.”

“O…Okay,” said Joey hesitantly, and then he felt the cloth and gentle pressure that was still agony against his back again, and choked down the urge to whimper.

There were a lot of types of pain. Stabs and being slammed with a blunt instrument? That was screaming pain. Fast, harsh, sudden. Prolonged cuts were the same. Probably, the actually feeling of having someone touch his back wound fell under that category too, but the problem was the pain it went _with._ In a lot of ways, to Quentin anyway, the ebb kind of permanent pain was even worse than the crashing down of a sudden injury. At least being stabbed was fast, and sometimes it was _so_ awful your brain didn’t even record all of it—or at least, if it did, you didn’t have to remember it right after. And that was agony, sure, but to Quentin, the worst kind of pain broken pain. The way you felt after something that couldn’t be fixed, or at least, couldn’t be fixed easy or fast enough to matter to you much got damaged. There was a serious pain that came after being stabbed, after the knife came back out, when you were just laying there, or hanging there, or tied there—if you lived long enough. And that was the kind he hated most. Your brain would assess the would and the damage it didn’t medically fully understand except that it was bad, and serious, and awful, and it knew it, and you would just get this godawful feeling in your whole being like you were broken. Like your body was falling apart, and you couldn’t stop it. And the pain wasn’t as sharp or as agonizing as injury pain was, but the pain that those kinds of actions left? The ebb of injury pain? To Quentin, it was worse.

It was worse, because the moments dragged on, and you had to live with it, and you had time to think about it, and that was so much worse than feeling it could ever be. And most of the time, whatever had done it to you was watching, or gloating, or you were alone, and there was nobody to help you or save you at all, and fuck, it was scary to feel like that. Even in a trial, when he knew he’d heal after. To know he was broken in a way that just wasn’t gonna really fix until the trial was over—in a way that _never_ would have in real life? It was overwhelming. And he _hated_ it. He felt that was some in every trial, especially hanging from a meat hook with a hole through his left shoulder so big it should have killed him. But he’d felt it the most in trials he’d had with the Nightmare—the ones that had never really been normal trials at all.

He fucking hated it. Because it was overwhelming to feel irreparably broken, and scared of that, and the feeling that came with it was hopelessness, and the instinct that went with it was to cry, and that was always the worst _possible_ thing you could do in the situation that caused it. It would just make everything worse, and it was usually what whoever had done it to you wanted to see, and you would lose in _every_ way finally, if you did it for them. But God, it was always so hard to feel that much pain and not.

“Quentin?”

That wasn’t the first time Joey had said his name, he was realizing suddenly. It was maybe the…fourth? _Shit. Shit—I was dissociating again._ “Yeah,” he managed, trying to seem there and okay and more normal and intact than his reality.

For a moment, Joey just looked at him searchingly, something that he wanted to believe might be concern in his eyes, and then he said, “The poultice. I asked if it was cool for me to put it on now.”

 _You…?_ Shit, how long had he been out of his head? His stomach was cool from the washcloth too—Joey must have wiped both wounds already. _That’s not a great sign._

“Uh,” he barely got out, trouble finding his voice, “Sure. Go ahead.”

“Okay,” said Joey quietly.

Quentin felt the paste against the wound in his back and tried to make as little noise as possible as he felt sparks shoot up his back muscles. _Weather it. Weather it. You’re almost there. _Fuck, he was tired. He was more tired than before.

Beside him, Joey shifted in front a little again, and went to slather some of the crushed herbs on his stomach, and Quentin tried to look away and not think, but dissociating wasn’t happening this time, and the pain was awful. There were bruises there, from being kicked—nasty and big. And even the really light pressure Joey was exerting on his stomach felt like being stabbed with sixteen tiny knives all at once, and Quentin had a high pain threshold, but he had been in so much pain for so long and was so exhausted and worn out and strained that it was almost more than he could take, and he choked, trying to keep back sounds of pain, and then he couldn’t, and let out an awful little broken cry, and Joey stopped and looked at him nervously.

“It’s fine,” managed Quentin, “Keep going.”

He wanted to cry. He _hated_ that he wanted to cry. Joey went carefully and quickly, but it was fucking unbearable, and he had been working _so hard_ not to think of this in terms of “ _You’re tied up and trapped and the person who did that is now hurting you,”_ but for all his effort, he was just a little bit, and fuck—he wished he was out cold. He knew it was stupid, because there was absolutely _no_ safe way to get a head wound, but he was almost to just pleading with Joey to smash him in the head with something so he could pass out, because then he could at _least_ skip some time, even if he wouldn’t be resting. Unconsciousness wasn’t a natural state, so you didn’t dream in it like you did fainting or passing out from exhausting, so he could do that one. And he was _desperate_ to just switch off.

“Okay, got it,” said Joey, sounding relieved, “Just gotta wrap it now.”

Quentin let out a breath and gave a nod, feeling a lot better at the news. _Thank God._

“You did good, by the way,” said Joey. It had sounded sincere, but the second Quentin glanced over in confusion, Joey looked like he wished he had never spoken in his life. “I mean,” he hurried to add, “I don’t know that I’ve ever been _that_ hurt, but I’ve been pretty hurt a bunch of times in my life, and it’s hard to stay that quiet. I…guess you have to get pretty good at it as a survivor…” There was _much_ more ‘ _fuck why did I say that’_ instant regret on his face. “—but, still. I was impressed,” he tried desperately.

Quentin didn’t know what to do with that.

Joey took that some kind of way, glanced away awkwardly, and then just picked up some fresh bandages and went to re-wrap the wound. Quentin watched him as he worked, trying to figure a little bit of this out. He still felt sick and awful, but the pain of having the wound wrapped seemed a lot less bad, and he was really stuck on why Joey would say that. _…I…think it was a compliment?_ tried his tired mind, _…or…Or he was trying to make you feel better?_ What the fuck? That was so confusing…

“So, uhm, Ohio,” said Joey, trying to regain some kind of poise, “What’s it like there?”

“Uh, k—” There was suddenly immense shooting pain in Quentin’s gut. Overwhelming, like turning a little to glance at Joey had been stepping on a landmine, or he’d been slammed in the gut the with a spear. He started to cry out, and then the contents of his stomach replaced sound in his throat, and he was doubled over vomiting.

He was pretty sure he heard Joey shout something, but he didn’t really hear it. Quentin had been really sick before a few times crowing up, but outside of Plague trials, he had never projectile vomited before. Sure as fuck was now. For almost fifteen seconds he had absolutely no control of his body, and it was just projectile vomiting, and then wretching, and then dry-heaving once there was nothing left.

It was maybe the most awful Quentin had ever felt, and the pain in his gut from before was inflamed agony now coming in waves, and his throat burned, and he felt so broken and helpless and spent he wanted to just give up and curl up here and die, and his eyes were stinging from the acid and the urge to cry, and he didn’t even notice Joey had an arm around him to keep him partially upright until the dry heaves started to just dwindle into weak coughs.

 _When did…?_ thought Quentin dizzily, trying to focus on Joey’s face with blurring eyes. Had it been near the start? He couldn’t remember. But it must have been, or he’d have fallen over, probably. … _What is he…doing?_

“Jesus Christ!” said Joey with incredible worry as soon as it seemed like Quentin was finished puking up everything in his body. And grip on Quentin shifted, and he was vaguely aware of being leaned against the back of the couch. Joey gaped from him, to the huge pile of vomit and back, horror flooding his features. “Jesus Christ! Is that blood?” he asked frantically.

Quentin looked down at the pile of vomit wearily and there was indeed some deep red mixed in. _Oh good. That’s the good kind. If it’s black and like coffee grounds it means you’re really fucked. That’s the better kind of blood to vomit up. Shit, that’s a lot of it though._

“A-Are you dying?” asked Joey when he didn’t get an answer. He went like he was going to shake him, stopped just short of it, and tried to get through to him vocally again instead. “Quentin! Are you—you’re bleeding internally!—That’s what that means, right? Can we stop it?”

He was getting frantic. Quentin on the other hand, felt weirdly detached from it. Even from the pain, at the moment. _I think I hit my breaking point and my brain is just kind of shutting things down or something._

“Can you hear me?” asked Joey in desperation, hands on his shoulders.

“Yeah,” managed Quentin finally in a raspy, torn whisper, blinking and making himself look back at Joey, “Yeah, I hear you.”

“Are you fucking dying?” pressed Joey franticly.

“No,” said Quentin wearily. Shit, Joey’s face was going in and out of focus and that was making him feel sick again.

“NO?” asked Joey, indicating the admittedly large amount of blood in the vomit.

“I…” Why _wasn’t_ he worried? Shit, he knew this… Oh, right. “It’s old,” managed Quentin, working to keep his eyes open and focused on Joey, “The…see the color?”

Joey looked back at the vomit.

“That’s…it’s dark. Because it was…being digested.” Shit forming sentences was rough. “It’d be…there would be bright red too,” finished Quentin with great effort, looking from the vomit back to Joey, “If I was bleeding still. I must have been, when I got hurt, and then healed myself. Or there’d…there’d be both. …And…probably I’d be dead.”

“…Oh,” said Joey like an exhale, relief settling on his features. He almost smiled for a second, then glanced at the vomit and lost the relief. “Shit!—Shit, sorry,” he said hurriedly, snatching up the blankets in a bundle so the vomit stayed trapped in the center. Arms full, he hopped up and tore off for the doorway, turning to call, “Just stay there for a second, okay!” before vanishing.

 _Where else would I go?_ thought Quentin, freezing again with no blankets at all, but barely feeling it this time. The agonizing waves from before had become more of a steady throb like someone was hitting him very slowly with a bat over and over in his gut, but at least it was a step up from before.

 _Man, I don’t have bad days, do I?_ thought Quentin exhaustedly, _I just have shit days and fucking endless hell days, and that’s it._ At least the bandages had been wrapped enough they hadn’t come off, and they hadn’t gotten vomit all over them either. _…How though?_ Oh, right. Joey had been helping him stay up. Right…

There was the sound of pounding feet.

“Here!” called Joey, bursting in with his arms full of different blankets or thick curtains, Quentin wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it was quilt-like and big and there was more than one of them in his arms. He skidded to a stop by Quentin and hurriedly dropped his armload on the couch to unroll, then got the blankets over him and wrapped them around his shoulders.

It should have been…something, weird, maybe, but Quentin was so out of it he barely even registered that it was happening. Mostly just felt the change from freezing to more okay again, and even that just sort of passively.

“Are you okay?” asked Joey nervously as he finished, looking Quentin over and seeming extremely concerned by whatever he was seeing.

“I don’t know,” said Quentin, because he was now too tired to remember to lie about things _or_ to know the real answer to that question.

“Are you cold?” asked Joey.

Quentin shook his head once weakly, zoning out and staring at the floor past Joey’s hoodie for a few seconds before wondering why he was doing that.

“Shit, hang on,” said Joey with less franticness in his voice now, and a lot of something that sounded like concern, but probably couldn’t have been. For a second, Quentin wasn’t paying attention or aware of what Joey was doing at all. Then he felt something touch his face.

Usually, that would have alarmed him, but he was too out of it and exhausted to be anything but confused. He looked up to figure out what was going on though, and focused in on Joey with his arm extended.

“Here, I got you,” said Joey in the voice of someone talking for the sake of the comfort talking offered alone. Quentin didn’t really get what was happening at all until he felt something cool and wet at the side of his mouth and grimaced and jerked back, just barely enough energy left in him for his body to return a little fear to him, and saw a wet cloth in Joey’s hand when he drew it away into view.

There was vomit on the rag, and some blood. His brain wouldn’t form words for what that meant, but he got it on some emotional level, because he felt the panic that had been starting up lessen a little bit.

“It’s okay,” said Joey, holding up his free palm placatingly, “I’m just cleaning you up. I couldn’t keep you up and hold your hair back at the same time.”

 _…Oh. That’s…okay then…_ thought Quentin, putting meaning to what he was hearing with effort, _…That’s okay, then…It’s okay…_ He made a weak little head motion that had been meant to be a nod, and thankfully Joey took it was one.

As Joey went back to what he’d been doing, Quentin felt his beathing slow back down and his emotions settle a little into just the dull of exhaustion over foggy confusion and pain. He stared off at nothing and felt Joey wipe vomit from the side of his face and little patches of his curly hair, and after a few long seconds, he zoned back in enough to watch him.

The other guy noticed him look over and glanced up from his work and smiled reassuringly for a second before going back to what he’d been doing. Quentin kept watching.

“Thanks,” whispered Quentin when he found the strength for it.

Joey’s face was still going in and mostly out of focus, but he was pretty sure he smiled a little when he glanced up. “Sure. Sorry you’re hurt so bad.”

“Me too,” agreed Quentin, dangerously close to drifting.

“Do you think you’ll be okay?” asked Joey, “Can you keep…healing yourself better? Or—faster? You said you could do that?”

“Kind of,” managed Quentin, “but…only with really bad…wounds. And. Stuff. I…I guess maybe. …But it doesn’t always work,” he added sadly after a few seconds, and Joey looked up, surprised. “It…depends on how I feel, or…I don’t know…” He _still_ wasn’t really sure what made it fluctuate, but he was pretty sure it was tied to his mental health, which was a huge fucking shame, because that was usually kind of in tatters. It really fucking sucked that his best skill was one he couldn’t really control. Once he’d been in such a shit mental state the ability had disappeared completely, for months, and he’d thought he’d lost it for good. “…Confidence, maybe,” he suggested quietly. When had talking gotten so hard to do? “Or…security or something. …I’m…not really sure.”

“Oh,” said Joey, sounding a little worried. He seemed to expect Quentin to say something else, but Quentin was out of things to say, so it was just quiet instead, and Joey thought for a second, almost said something, and then just looked away and went back to cleaning off vomit. “There,” he said after a few more seconds, drawing his hand back and trying to give another reassuring smile.

Quentin didn’t know what he was supposed to say, so he didn’t.

Whatever he looked like must not have been good, because Joey’s smile fell, into worry. “…Do you feel _worse_ than before? I—I think I got the bandages on enough they should hold fine, before you started throwing up, but I can check them.”

“I don’t know,” said Quentin with the little bit of voice he could still muster, not feeling anything at all but the dull pain and consuming fatigue, “I can’t remember how I felt before.”

Joey watched him for a second, then glanced to the side, thinking, hesitated, then reached down and picked up one of the coffee mugs from before. “Here,” he offered, holding it out.

Quentin looked at it.

“It’s water,” offered Joey hopefully when he didn’t move to take it.

“I might…throw that up,” said Quentin haltingly.

Joey considered that. “…Do you want some? Like, do you think your body feels like water would make it feel better?”

Quentin tried to guess. _Maybe? I want it, but I don’t want to throw up again. I can’t. I don’t have any energy left._ God his body wanted to cry. He had forgotten exhaustion was a thing you could feel strong enough for your body to want to cry about it. _But we can’t,_ he pleaded with himself, _We don’t even have the energy to cry._

“I…do, but I’m…”

Somehow Joey seemed to get from that what he was thinking. “Okay, uh—what if you try just a little. And if you feel okay, then a little more. And you can stop if you start to feel sick.”

That seemed okay, so Quentin tried to get his hands out from under the blanket, and couldn’t, because they wouldn’t come apart, and he was confused for a second, since he couldn’t see his hands, but then Joey reached over and helped him get his arms free of the blankets and he could see them again and remembered they were tied together and that was why, and they had been this whole time. _Right…You…_ He looked blankly at his hands for a few seconds, and then up at Joey again, confused, because things didn’t seem to line up right. _…Kidnapped me? No. You’re helping me. Fuck…_ His head was starting to ache again too. This was not his week. Or hour.

“Why am I tied up?” he asked Joey weakly.

Joey got an indescribable kind of shocked look on his face for a second and stopped moving like he’d lagged as a human being. “I—so you won’t…” He trailed off and looked down at what he could see of Quentin, then back up. “Look—it’s not important. Just—here,” he offered uncomfortably, shifting closer and holding the mug out again.

Part of him was confused Joey hadn’t answered, but Quentin reached out and took the cup, which was difficult, because his body felt heavy like it was weighted down with bags of sand, and he could see his hands trembling a little. _Shit, I’m gonna—_

“Here, I’ll help you keep it steady,” said Joey, reaching over and catching his arms and helping to anchor him.

“…Oh,” said Quentin, accepting that because he was too tired to find any problems with it, and then, thinking of one, “…You’re…not gonna pour it on me or something, right?”

“What?” said Joey, mystified, “No. Why would I do that?”

“…I don’t know,” said Quentin, “I’m really tired. But it wouldn’t be funny to me right now. I would feel awful.”

“—Yeah, I know—I’m not an idiot,” assured Joey, “I know it’s not a good time to prank you.”

“Okay,” said Quentin. Feeling reassured, he lifted the cup up and took a sip, then paused to see if it would come back up.

“Doing okay?” asked Joey after a second.

“I think so,” said Quentin exhaustedly. It seemed okay, and the nausea wasn’t back in force, so he kept going slowly after a moment. It felt good. The cool liquid eased some of the burning in his throat, and he was really glad for it by the time it was gone. Joey watched him the whole time, keeping his arms steady, and looked pleased for some reason when it was over.

“Should I finish tying off the bandages, or will it hurt you again?” asked Joey, taking the empty cup and setting it on the floor.

“Oh, that wasn’t you,” said Quentin, focus still wavering, but cued in enough to listen “I just messed something up moving.”

“And it hurt you _that bad?_ ” asked Joey, distressed.

Quentin tried to shrug. “I guess.”

“Jesus,” whispered Joey. He shifted a little closer and lowered the blankets enough to find the loose bandage ends from before and tie them off. It was funny. He’d been going slow and gentle before, but now he was doing it like he was afraid applying any pressure at all would make him disintegrate like burned paper did when you touched it. It made Quentin feel good, because it always was kind of reassuring for somebody to be needlessly careful for you. It made it feel like you were important. Funny to watch too, and it was kind of inept, but he didn’t tell him to stop.

 _I guess you’re really not so bad, _thought Quentin, smiling a little, and instantly he felt like a traitor and something dark and heavy and worrying settled on him that he didn’t quite have the energy or mental capacity right now to figure out. It freaked him out, though, and he felt incredibly unsettled. Like it felt realizing you had been drugged. _I don’t understand,_ he thought frantically, trying to figure out what had happened, _What did I do? What did I do wrong?_

He guessed he shouldn’t trust Joey, or like him at all, since he was a killer, but he _was_ helping him, a-and he hadn’t done anything wrong, had he, just by thinking maybe he wasn’t so—

“Okay,” said Joey, finishing tying off the bandages and then readjusting the blankets so they covered him before moving back. He stood up then, and Quentin realized suddenly he was going to go, and everything else he’d been thinking and feeling vanished and gave way to just deep blanketing fear.

“You’re leaving?” asked Quentin. Everything felt worse immediately. Whatever he was thinking or feeling or should be, he didn’t want to be alone, not when it was so hard to stay awake. And that was only half of it. He felt awful. And he had been trying to play it confident and keep a level head, but he hadn’t been really that secure about puking up blood either, and what if he was wrong and he _was_ dying, and if Joey left, he was going to die alone on this couch? Or if he could have done something to make it, there’d be nobody here to help him? He just… Quentin was way too tired to be thinking rationally, and he knew it, but it didn’t matter. Being this broken down made being alone seem very unsafe and intimidating, especially fucked up and not even sure how badly, and he was scared of it.

“Yeah,” said Joey, surprised by the question and his reaction, “I have to. The Legion’ll notice I’m gone if I don’t.”

“Oh,” managed Quentin, trying to keep it together and seem perfectly fine about this, “…right.”

He must have been pretty transparent, because Joey looked kind of taken aback, and then concerned, and he hesitated. “…It’ll be okay,” offered Joey, trying to be reassuring, “You’re safe in here. I’ll come back tonight.”

Quentin glanced away and nodded.

Joey didn’t say anything, but after a second he sensed movement and glanced back up, and saw Joey going over to the edge of the room.

 _Oh, he’s getting his knife,_ thought Quentin, feeling sick.

He did, and he slipped the belt back on, then glanced back and saw Quentin watching him and their eyes met for a second. Quentin had been a little afraid it might make him angry for some reason, because tired and out of it Joey with the knife kind of felt like a completely different person than Joey without the knife, but it didn’t seem to. If anything, he looked worried, or unsure. And after a moment, he bit his lip, then knelt and dug behind the boxes back there and came up holding something Quentin couldn’t quite make out.

Whatever it was tucked under an arm, he came back over to the couch again and knelt. “There’s another cup of water—I’ll leave it here,” he said, snagging a second mug from the floor and setting it on the recliner in easy reach. “Uh, you can have this too, if it helps,” he offered, holding out the thing he’d gotten from the corner of the room, and then setting it down by Quentin without looking at him, “I found it here when we first showed up.”

The thing was a really old, worn teddy bear with a striped sweater.

“I…I have a thing about striped sweaters,” stammered Quentin as soon as he processed it, then he immediately kicked himself mentally for saying that.

Joey looked surprised, and to be fair that was probably about the least expected possible response, but he just said, “Oh, okay,” and pulled the sweater off the toy and pocketed it, then hesitated and said, “Or—I mean. I don’t know if it helps. I think it helps…some people. I’ve heard people say that, anyway. Like, if you’re feeling bad. But if you don’t want it at all, that’s okay—I’ll just go put it somewhere. I just…I. You don’t look so good, and if it helps people _sometimes,_ I thought maybe you…I-I mean I’ve _heard_ that it helps anyway, so.”

“Oh…” said Quentin, trying to process that. He looked down at the bear. It seemed comforting enough. Quentin hadn’t really had any stuffed animals since he was a little kid, but it was worn out and one of its eyes was fucked up, so it looked like it felt about like he did, and that was kind of comforting. It didn’t _really_ count as not being alone, but, he was pretty sure Joey was trying to be nice, and it did seem kind of nice to him, and it wouldn’t _hurt,_ so. “Yeah, thank you,” he decided, looking back at Joey, “I’ll uh. Have someone to talk to.” _Why the fuck did you say that why the **fuck** did you say that!!_

Thank God, Joey didn’t seem to clock that as weird and just looked really happy instead for some reason, so in turn Quentin felt a little less like he wanted to die.

“Okay, cool,” said Joey, smiling. He stood up again. “I really gotta run, but I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay? I promise. Just try to get some rest and heal up, okay?”

Quentin gave a nod.

Looking very proud of himself and weirdly happy, Joey gave him a little nod back and smiled again, then turned and vanished out of the room.

Quentin watched him go, trying to process a lot of stuff, and then looked back at the little worn teddy bear. He still felt like absolute shit, but at least he was more awake than before, and he kind of hadn’t _quit_ dissociating a little since throwing up, so the pain was still kind of removed right now.

“It’s a lot better without that sweater, huh?” he asked the bear, not sure why. Maybe to have something to do. “Shit, sorry,” he added more quietly, looking away and back out the far window at the little bit of Ormond he could see outside it, “I’m not supposed to make any noise.” Obviously there was no response, but weirdly it was kind of comforting to have an inanimate object with a face to talk to. You also apparently felt a little less like you were going to keel over and die if you were sitting on a couch covered in blankets with a teddy bear.

 _That was nice,_ thought Quentin tiredly, returning to his earlier game of trying to study every detail of the room to stay awake. He hoped that was okay to think. He was too exhausted to remember why it might not be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In general, any time you vomit up blood you should consider it a pretty serious situation and not take your changes--go to a hospital. But it's also true that it's not always a massive health scare, and the color and consistency of the blood can be a good indicator of how bad of shape you're in. Brighter blood tends to indicate a faster flow of blood, darker a slower, but oddly enough a lot of the time the brighter blood is actually less worrying. It is more likely to come from a tear in something less vital than an internal organ, like a tear in your throat itself. Dark blood like coffee grounds in consistency should be considered an immediate life-threatening situation, and treated as such--if it's dark and chunky, it means both that it came from deep inside your body where your vital organs are, and that it has been there for a while, neither of which is a good thing. In general though, any vomited blood it's best not to chance it with.
> 
> The new update to Ormond in DbD has some very cool updates, such as more detailed graphics, ski lodge equipment, alcohol and cups in the lodge, and actual beds in the upstairs rooms, plus a (sadly broken) TV in one of them. These new updates include two teddy bears with little striped sweaters, one on a bed upstairs, one down in the bottom of the lodge. Probably, they were gift shop options originally, before the place fell into disrepair, but I see no reason a scared teenager adjust to a new life in hell might secretly snag and keep one close for comfort curled up in a corner of the building alone at night. There's not a lot in the realm that offers comfort, and even a small source of it is more than welcome. : ( Sadly these updates also took away the little lowered area around the main fireplace and replaced it with an ugly stove, but since this is a poor design choice and I pick and chose what I want anyway (and also began this well before the graphic/landscape updates), the Conversation Pit as my friend calls it stays forever in my universe of Ormonds. Just, the teddy bear and the beds can come too. There's also a lovely little raised platform near the killer's shack that has a ladder up to it--probably part of the ski lift system, but I can't think of it as anything but a mega deerstand regrettably. It's kind of awesome though, and has a nice little chair setup up there, so I'm sure I'll come back to that one soon.
> 
> In Joey's unmasked official model, he uses some kind of black bodypaint around his eyes, and in the shape of a beard. It is absolutely not an actual beard. To the best of my ability, all I can fathom as a reason for doing this is Joey going on the fucking galaxy brain take of 'It sucks white people being basically face blind to poc is a thing period, but I may as well weaponize it, because if I get my mask snagged during a robbery but I drew a beard on, there's no /way/ anybody will later be able to pick me out in a police lineup' -- made quadruple incredible in the fact we have empirical evidence he was /absolutely right/, because at least a solid half if not more of the DbD fandom draws him with a beard to this day. I am fucking obsessed with the fact he did this, and I could not love him more. Truly, an incredible young man. 
> 
> While sleeping is not necessary in the realm, Quentin was /already/ at physical breaking point when he got there sleep-deprivation-wise, and that hasn't had any ability to heal. In addition, while you don't /need/ to eat, sleep, or drink, you /can/, and your desire to do those things is effected in-realm by normal triggers like smelling food, or the subject being brought up, seeing water, or physical exertion and strain that would usually make you tired. Unfortunately for Quentin, not only is he in hell from injury, he's fucked up from extended exhaustion in the extreme. Mentally, after being awake for a straight 24 hours you are operating at a cognitive level equivalent to being legally drunk. In addition, prolonged sleep deprivation not only causes memory and mood issues, it causes you to feel pain more acutely as well. This poor kid is literally in hell /and/ figuratively in hell, and the taxing strain on the rest of his body from everything else going on is absolutely not helping. Please be kind to him; he is doing his best.
> 
> Hi, I'm back! Thank you so much for reading another chapter of New Dawn Fades! <3 I always have fun on this one. Quentin and Joey are always an absolute pleasure to write because they make complete sense in their own heads, and /absolutely none/ to each other. I hope you had fun reading it! And that it won't be as long before my next one. Thank you so much for all the kind comments and kudos, and for trying out my work. It really does all mean so much to me. Thank you. TuT


	7. Two-Man Con

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin encounters a second Legion member. Joey tries to handle one hell of a trial.

Quentin had lost time.

He had no real idea how long he’d been zoned out for, but he’d been out of it hard. For a few seconds after fully coming back to himself, he couldn’t even remember where he was or what was going on—not just the last few hours, but the whole world he was in itself. He was in a bed, blankets, pillows, kind of cold. Stuffed animal. That meant his grandparents’ house, right? And cold probably meant it was Christmas and they were there for a visit. What time was it? He must have been really tired to be feeling so foggy. Maybe he was at home, though. Or…

 _No, I’m sick,_ thought Quentin, bleary eyes opening to slits and blinking at out of focus woodgrain in a wall, _I must have the flu or something. That’s why I’m…foggy. And want to throw up. What day is it?_

That wasn’t good. He couldn’t…remember. _Is that normal? I…_ Shit, he didn’t remember if it was when you were sick or not, but he felt feverish and confused. And _freezing._ And there was pain, too—a lot of it. In his stomach and his throat especially. _I gotta be sick then._

Pretty sick, at that. He couldn’t remember feeling this bad in…? _… In a…long time, I guess? E-ever? No…_

Shit, it wasn’t good though. And he wasn’t even sure how sick he was. _I need…_

Something. He wasn’t sure. Water? Help? To make sure things were… _Dad._

Trying to sit up a little and finding it harder than expected, but unsure why, he righted himself a little and forced his eyes the rest of the way open. There was movement is his right periphery and he thought, _Oh, good,_ and turned his head to try and focus on it.

“Dad?” he croaked out weakly.

There _was_ a figure there, and it moved in the doorway, but something was…

— _FUCK_

Adrenaline shot through his body and sent his heart thudding as it woke him completely and cleared away most of the fog, and his eyes went wide.

Not home, not home, not on Earth at all! And what was worse, the figure standing in the doorway with a hand still holding up the thick black fabric partition _wasn’t_ Joey.

The figure and he stared at each other in shock.

It wasn’t Joey, but Quentin knew who it was.

Not by name, but, there were four Legions. Two girls, two boys. And this was the smaller of the girls, the last one the survivors had encountered initially when Legion had arrived, the one with pink hair and a mask with twisted metal wire across it. She wasn’t wearing the mask right now, though, and Quentin almost wished she was, because without it he could see her expression, and she was looking at him like she’d opened the door to her bathroom and walked in to find a working meth lab someone had installed overnight.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck,_ thought Quentin, nausea overwhelming him as recent memories jogged in a flood and anxiety tore through his body. And somehow, that still wasn’t enough. He felt frozen in place. _Oh fuck oh fuck._ Joey had said the other three would kill him if they found him. This wasn’t supposed to happen; they weren’t supposed to come in here, but they had, and he was still tied up! One of the others was here, and there was jack shit he could do to protect himself. _I’m gonna die like this._

Fuck, fuck! Did—did he call out to Joey?

 _He’s not gonna help you!_ he told himself desperately, _Not if doing that is gonna get him in trouble with the other—_

The girl shot forward. Becoming the version of her burned into his memory from trials, snapped out of her shock and snatching a sharpened stake from her pocket as she came at him with a fury.

Quentin shot up, panicked, fighting through the agony in his torso and letting out a muffled cry of pain as he struggled more upright and back a little against the couch, breaths coming too fast. _Shit shit._ It was coming at him again, for the second sure time in 24 hours. Death. And he couldn’t run from it.

The blankets slipped down off him as he made it up to a sitting position and wedged himself deep against the couch back, constricted pupils fixed on the Legion.

And she stopped. Inches from him, hand raised with a weapon in it. What had been surprise on her face became confusion, and then shock, and then disbelief and horror.

Quentin stayed frozen, staring at her, confused. Waiting for the blow that should have come six seconds ago.

It didn’t. She drew back a little instead, eyes scanning him and brow furrowed, expressions flickering rapidly and becoming a stream of consternation.

“What the…fuck?” asked the girl finally, looking back up at his face. It was hard to understand her tone, except that there was definitely disbelief and disgust mixed into it.

_Uhm. Fuck. Fuck—what does she want? Why is she asking me that? I don’t…_

He was panicking. His fucking stupid body staying frozen and giving him nothing to work with, like it fucking always did in situations like this when he was alone. He tried—he did—but didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just stared at her and tried to stay braced and to think himself out of a situation there was no way to out-think.

She just stared right back, waiting for an answer, the same confusing, distressed look still on her face, but slowly tinging with anger now.

 _What does that mean; what does that mean? What does she want from me? _he thought desperately through the panic, _Fuck—fuck—you’re still alive right now—do something—say something! Joey—Joey didn’t kill you immediately. She looks about your age too—m-maybe, maybe there’s a chance—maybe she won’t if you—_

He tried. He opened his mouth to say something, but he choked and didn’t. His limbs were locking up and he could feel it hitting him. _Fuck. FUCK. WHY._

Why did this happen to him?? If he was with people, and shit went down, he was okay! Fight flight freeze was _always_ fight, and that was good! He could use it! But whenever he was fucking alone he—

_Shit. shit._

He was seeing himself in a dream years ago, fallen asleep on accident when he was meant to keep watch, getting his head rammed into a pipe until it was pouring blood, and then held onto by Krueger and just…standing there. Not fighting or pleading or trying to run. Just looking back and waiting to die like there was nothing he could do. and… _I’m still waiting to die I’m still waiting to die I’m—_

“What the fuck?” hissed the girl again, leaning closer, and be blanched, trying to move away with nowhere to go. There was _so_ much emotion in her voice, it wasn’t a good kind.

_Why is she mad at me, why is she mad at me—because I’m here? I—_

Shit. Shit.

She looked surprised, though, or something. When he pulled back. And the look wasn’t entirely bad. He could have squinted and convinced himself it was a tiny flash of sympathy, and that made him almost hope. So.

“P..lease,” he managed haltingly, finally. Voice choked.

God. It immediately felt so wrong. To say that. Fuck, he could feel his arms shaking. He hadn’t…hadn’t… _ever_ begged a killer for mercy before. He’d seen other people do it. But…there had just…never been a point. It felt so wrong, doing it now, like he was betraying something. He had trouble getting more than that out and felt sicker the second he tried, and couldn’t.

_I’m going to die. And I’m going to die tied up and bleeding and begging._

He was hit with a wave of fury and nausea, but the nausea was the stronger of the two. _That’s_ what he was betraying. It was the way Krueger always worked so hard to get him to die, and the way he never had given him the satisfaction of claiming. _But I broke, I guess,_ he thought in a disconnected way that made him feel like the whole room was about to fracture into thousands of pieces and fall into nothingness below. _I…I finally…Fuck, I…_

She was talking. “’Please’?” _Echoing me,_ Quentin registered, feeling worse.

He made himself look up at her, sick and miserable, terrified. He couldn’t understand the way she was looking back at him at all. Like that confused her. No. Something else…

“Oh my god,” breathed out the girl. She moved the hand with the sharpened stake, and he flinched and shut his eyes on instinct. The Legion didn’t hit him with it, though. She lowered it, and he looked back up at her in confusion.

There was a definite look on her face now. But he couldn’t… _…Sympathy?_ There was no way that was right. She had been going to kill him twenty seconds ago. He was reading her wrong. He…

The girl looked down and took in his wounds and bound hands and then looked back up into his face. _Furious._

_Not sympathy not sympathy!_

“What the fuck!” she exploded in hissed distress and anger, “What the FUCK!”

Blanking on any other response, Quentin just flinched and tried again to pull back into the couch. _Fuck fuck fuck, stop freezing, stop freezing—please! You have to try! Anything!_

“Oh my _GOD,_ ” hissed the girl to him, “You’re a survivor! You’re one of the survivors. Fucking _shit!_ How long have you _been_ here? How—Who _did_ this to you?” Something clicked and her features were overcome with shock and dismay. She looked back at him, voice like she couldn’t believe it. “Oh my god, it was Joey. I knew he was hiding something, but. Was it Joey?”

“…I…” tried Quentin in a whisper, struggling to get anything out. _Stop shaking. Stop shaking._ His body wasn’t responding.

“Did Joey do this?” asked the girl again, leaning closer, intent, “One of us—Legion member? Skull mask, wears a lot of black?”

_Why is she looking at me like that. Shit, do I lie for him? There’s no point, is there—? There’s no way she’s that stupid._

He managed to nod.

“Oh my god,” said the girl in a very different tone of voice, disbelief and pain and anger. She flopped back onto the floor and sat there staring past him at nothing.

_What is happening._

“What the _fuck,_ what the fuck!” she continued, to herself, holding her hands up to look at them and trembling a little too, but not with fear. _…Anger? Just energy?_

He had less than no idea what to do now.

“I…Oh my _GOD,”_ cried the girl, not really to him, just to the room in general, “I-I always thought he…there was no way he. I thought he was a cool guy. He was my _friend._ I really liked him!”

_What. Wait. What?_

“I never…I _never_ thought…” she was almost at _crying_ now for some reason, holy shit. There were actual tears in her eyes. _This is surreal what the fuck is happening._ “How could he… _DO_ something like this to…” She turned back to Quentin then and kind of undeniably now he could tell it _was definitely _sympathy in her expression. “I am _so_ sorry.”

_What?_

“Look, I,” continued the girl, pulling herself back up to be crouched by the couch. “—I know we’re…We hunt you guys, for the Entity.” She seemed to only then to finally really register that the person in front of her was shivering and terrified and trying to sink into the couch back to get away from her, and her face scrunched up and got worried and distressed and she changed her tone to something almost _consoling_. “But we wouldn’t all do this—it’s not okay with all of us; it wouldn’t be. Okay? I’m not gonna hurt you too. You’re gonna be fine.” She shifted forward and took a knee by the couch and put her hands up, palm out. Like he was a scared dog that might run away.

_What the fuck is happening._

“I…” She stopped and bit her lip, thinking hard, then met his gaze again. “I don’t think—I don’t _think_ Frank would be okay with this. I think he’d help, b-but I never thought Joey would do something like this to somebody at all! So—s-so I. I’ll get Julie. I _know_ she won’t be okay with it. And she’ll make sure Frank listens too. So, you’ll be okay now. You’re gonna go home. We’ll take you back to your people. And I’m gonna kill Joey myself.”

 _Holy shit; she’s not kidding._ There was ice in her words and genuine murderous intent with that last line, but not for him, and Quentin was still entirely blanking on what the fuck— _Ooooohhhh shit shit shit—fuck fuck shit—_

“No-no—wait. W-wait, I,” stuttered Quentin, finally finding his voice again, “I uh. It isn’t. When I said Joey did this. I meant—he. He didn’t. It’s not like that.”

The girl lowered her hand a little and blinked at him in blank confusion.

“He _helped_ me,” Quentin managed, incredibly distressed, “I. I got—got shot by another killer. And. And stumbled in here bleeding when I couldn’t get back to the campfire, and he found be on the floor and took pity on me and patched me up and told me I could stay here so long as nobody else found out.”

The pink haired girl had a look on her face like she’d short circuited. She blinked again and twitched.

“He didn’t… _do_ anything to me,” continued Quentin worriedly. _Well, he kicked me, but._

“…But…then why did he leave you tied up shirtless in his _bed_?” asked the girl in slow building, confused and mortified dismay.

 _YEAH,_ thought Quentin, nerves so frayed he was suddenly fighting the urge to laugh, _That was kind of the first reaction I had waking up too. And I also flipped out. _Weird, that this Legion girl who had ripped open his guts before would care if that _had_ been what was going on. And apparently enough to do a murder, too. But…kind of reassuring. In a way. Or very reassuring, maybe. It at least meant there was something not just bad still in there for her too. He had no idea what surreal logic she was operating on to have this roulette wheel of a moral code, but, it was _something._ Which was a lot better than he would have thought to hope for.

“I…don’t know,” he answered her, realizing halfway through that he couldn’t really remember the reasoning Joey’d given him, “Uh…He. Was afraid I might…attack one of you?” That had been why, right? “And. All my stuff was soaked with blood. So.”

The Legion girl kept staring blankly at him and then slowly her cheeks turned pink and then crimson and she looked past him and turned her head away to stare at the wall for a second and cleared her throat. “Oh.”

Quentin watched her for a moment, heartrate slowing back down. He wasn’t really sure he was out of danger here, but it was a whole lot better than he’d thought a few minutes ago, and that was good. _Still. Uh. Her first sight instinct was murder, so…This might actually be bad for me. Fuck._

“…You uh,” he started carefully, clearing his throat, remembering the sincerity in Joey’s warnings about the others and trying not to show how very much he was definitely still scared of her. She glanced back to look at him, expression a strained and failed attempt to hide the fact she was mortified. “T-Thank you. For…”

Her eyes got bigger and she immediately looked away again, desperate for him to stop, so he did. Which might have been just as well, because what had he been going to say? ‘Thank you for caring’?

“H-he—uh, Joey,” Quentin said instead after a second, trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice, and the girl glanced back at him, “He said…if any of the others knew, they would probably kill me. Since it’s a risk, to let me stay here. And you’re all…not supposed to help us.” He’d been going to say ‘killers’, but it had suddenly felt like an incredibly terrible idea to maybe remind her of that specifically.

There was surprise on the girl’s face at the words, and then something else. Guilt, maybe, which was not the most reassuring sign.

“You…you’re not going to kill me, right?” he asked worriedly. _Please consider it too awkward now, please consider it too awkward now. I know you were gonna stab me, but you just offered to help me when you thought something different was going on; come on, please let that be a game changer._

“Uh.” Her eyes got bigger and she looked down and stared at the floor for a second. Thinking. “No,” she said finally, trying to seem like she had it together, and had known that instead of taken a second to decide on it just now. She glanced back over at him. “No, I won’t kill you.”

_Oh thank God._

“Or…tell the other two?” he added anxiously, going for whatever sympathy she might feel for him as hard as he could, since it was the only possible hope he had. He was beat to shit enough to probably look kind of sympathetic, and since that was quite literally all he had going for him right now, he might as well try to use it to boost the slim chance of survival he still had going. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to protect himself if she decided to kill him. It would just happen, so. “They…Joey said they’d—"

“—Kill you, yeah,” cut in the girl, thinking that over, and then giving him a little unhappy nod. “I uh.” She cleared her throat. “I won’t tell them. --–If you don’t tell Joey that I…uh—all the stuff I said,” she added hurriedly as it occurred to her.

Quentin nodded.

She looked relieved. “Okay. Deal then.”

The girl stood back up.

 _Wow, I actually survived this,_ thought Quentin in a detached way that was all he had the energy left for, _Go me._

“I’m uh—I’m Quentin, by the way,” he added hopefully. Remembering it was supposed to be harder to kill people the more you knew about them, and that was a start anyway.

“…Quentin,” she echoed after a second uncomfortably.

It was kind of interesting. How different this one was from Joey. She’d had no issue being around him in attack mode when she’d been mad at Joey, but now that wasn’t the case anymore, she wasn’t like Joey towards him at all. Not that _Joey’s_ reaction had made any sense to Quentin _at all_. Still interesting how completely different they seemed to take his presence at the lodge. This Legion was uneasy now, and it was pretty clear she wanted nothing more than to get the fuck out of the room and away from him, fast. The girl had glanced down at him though when she spoke, and he knew she could tell he’d been hoping for a name back. He could see her debating over giving it.

“I uh—I’m Susie,” she said with an exhale, like she hadn’t wanted to say it. Quentin hadn’t thought she would.

“Susie,” he echoed, like she had his name. Committing it to memory. _I know two Legion members’ names now. Some kind of day._

Susie studied him carefully for a moment, and her expression changed, but he wasn’t sure to what. “…You’re sure you’re… _not_ in…trouble?” she asked after a moment, voice a little softer.

This was like, the 18th time in the last 24 hours Quentin had been metaphorically knocked over by how surreal the situation he was in in the moment was. It was _so_ weird that this girl he’d been killed by before and seen kill friends was worried one of her friends might have kidnapped a survivor to assault. What the hell was her life like that she would care, and live how she did, and be surprised and call Joey her friend, but still be so quick to believe it was possible he might have done that? Probably he shouldn’t care that much, if for no other reason than he really didn’t have the emotional energy to think about, like, anything complicated right now. But it was hard not to.

Quentin had…never really spent a whole lot of time thinking about any of the killers, except to feel anger towards things they’d done. And none of them could be good people. But it was weird to be so directly confronted with the fact that whatever kind of people they were, they were in fact still very much _people_.

Honestly, the Legion had always been especially frustrating to get in trials—to him anyway—because there was something infuriating and painful about getting murdered brutally by someone your own age. He couldn’t figure out _why_ that felt worse in a lot of ways than getting killed by the older ones, but it kind of did. Like…you’d expect them to understand more, or have some little bit of solidarity, since you were similar, or something maybe. It felt just a very little like being betrayed, in ways getting killed by one of the older killers didn’t. But…he’d been wrong, about their ages—this one anyway. About her _being_ his age at all. She was… _definitely_ younger. Which was surreal.

Well, in fairness, Quentin supposed he wasn’t totally sure how old _he_ was now, but he was pretty sure it was older than her. She looked like, eighteen or something. _Maybe_ 19\. Maybe 17… _Really_ young. Like his friends back home before all this shit had happened. Like someone who could have been his classmate, or his friend even. Before this. It was weird seeing them without masks, too. –Not in a bad way—it was way less unnerving. But strange. Bad in a different way, one he didn’t have a name for, only a face. She had a kind of round, young face herself, big eyes with smudged liner around them, freckles, and…braces? Holy shit, braces. She _had_ to be pretty young then, right? Or…had been, anyway, when she got taken. Like he and Nea had been…

Quentin didn’t really _want_ to wonder what it was like being her, but he did, for a second. He was pretty damn sure he would never have killed people for the Entity, no matter what it used against him. He’d rather die, or suffer agony than hurt innocent people, and he could say that in more than just words, too. He’d actively chosen it every trial he was in, again and again and again—normal trials, Krueger trials, during torture. But. He bet—that was stupid—he _knew_ it would fuck you up if you did. Just thinking about it fucked him up. Killing people…People like his friends, for any reason, you— _Stop, you don’t have the energy for this. Also, she asked you a question like ten seconds ago, and you’re staring into space, ADHD dumbass. Say something. ‘Are you sure you’re not in trouble?’_

“I…Yeah, I…” he’d started out strong, but thinking about it, he actually had no idea if he _was_ in real trouble. _Probably I am._ “…I…don’t know,” he said instead. Probably that hadn’t been a great thing to say.

Susie tilted her head a little and furrowed her brow. “He _didn’t_ hurt you th—”

“—No,” agreed Quentin quickly, “No, he didn’t. I just…”

He didn’t know how to say to her that she was a serial killer who’d chased him down with a hole through his shoulder from being on a meat hook she’d thrown him onto screaming, and then knocked him to the ground, and ripped his guts out with a sharpened stake made from an old ruler, and Joey had done the same, so of course he was in trouble, and none of the less-than-expected amount of trouble he was in for sure right now even made sense to him. But of course he wasn’t sure things would be okay, and of course he was scared. And confused.

She saw the look on his face, though, and to his surprise, he thought he saw her without any of those words instantly get something Joey still hadn’t managed to after several conversations. And she looked sorry, and…sad.

“Right,” she said quietly, looking away. She kept her eyes on the ground for several seconds and scuffed her shoe against the floor nervously, then looked back at him. “I…uh. I don’t know what to say to you, so, I’m gonna leave?”

That was…blunt, but, that seemed okay to him. At least she kind of made sense.

“But uh,” she added quickly, “I’ll…help Joey run interference. So hopefully the others don’t find out too.”

 _Oh yeah. Why had she…? _“Will they come in too?” asked Quentin nervously, “Joey said you all don’t go in each other’s rooms and no one would come here if I was quiet, but-”

“-Yeah, well, usually we don’t, but he was being super suspicious all morning, so I thought he was up to something,” said Susie, “He’s not very good at being sneaky. But I am,” she added hurriedly, trying to reassure him when she saw the look on his face, “So, it’ll be okay. Just. Stay quiet and stuff.”

He gave a nod.

“Okay. Cool.” She turned and went to the curtain at the edge of the room, hesitated and turned back to him like she was gonna say something else, and then stopped.

He waited, watching her, in case she decided to go ahead and say whatever it had been.

Whatever it had been, she decided against it and turned her back to him again, took half a step and stayed frozen there in indecision a few long seconds, and then her shoulders slumped a little. Finally, she turned back towards him a little, just barely enough to be able to see him again over her shoulder. “I…” Her voice was tight. She swallowed hard, then tried again. “I’m. …” Susie looked away, tapped her finger against the doorframe in agitation, then just stepped out, thought unfinished.

Quentin kept his eyes on the doorway for a moment as he heard her footsteps retreating, then looked away himself.

“Well, that happened,” he told himself quietly, because somehow it felt more reassuring than just thinking it.

 _You survived anyway,_ he added mentally, trying to perk himself up, _That could have been really bad. But you made it. And now…_

Now what, exactly?

“Well, I’m still tied up and stuck in this fucking room,” he muttered under his breath for the comfort of hearing a voice. “And my whole body hurts. …At least I don’t think I actually fell asleep this time.” He didn’t _think_ so, anyway.

_Wait, fuck, did I say ‘Dad?’ out loud? Did she hear me say ‘Dad?’_

He grimaced at the thought and then sighed. It wasn’t worth wondering about. What did it really matter anyway?

It kind of hurt to think about, though. Not because of Susie. That was…whatever, at worst. But because he could still kind of remember how he’d felt, thinking he was home sick, and he could call his dad, and he’d be there with some water or chicken soup and saltines. That no matter how bad he was hurt or how sick he got, there would be his dad there, looking after him. Probably bringing in the little tv from the garage and setting it up to watch stuff with him upstairs. Talk to him. Push his hair back off his forehead to check his temperature. …It was physically painful to remember that kind of thing now. God, it wasn’t even a significant kind of physical touch, but he missed it so much he wanted to cry, thinking about it. He missed his _Dad_.

“Please be okay,” he whispered to the room like he had so many times for so many days for what had to be a good number of years now. _Wherever you are,_ he prayed silently, _please be alive. Please be happy. Have had some good years without me. Be okay, even if I never make it back home. Find somebody else to care about and love and have be family, with Mom and me both gone now. Don’t wait. Don’t keep mourning me forever. Just think about me sometimes, in a happy way, and that’s enough. Remember the good stuff you miss._

Above all, he just _needed_ him to be alive. Not knowing that might be the single worst thing to him about being trapped here—even worse than the dying. If he could _just_ have known. He…

_Come on Quentin. This isn’t helping you._

He tried to shake himself. Let his thoughts linger on what he thought he remembered it feeling like to be hugged by his dad. The smell of his old house. The way thinking he was there again had felt right and comforting and real. Then he tried to shut it away and move on, because living in that was going to be unbearable.

 _Well, at least you’re…doing okay here so far,_ he told himself, more awake, and taking in the room with a lot more actual processing power than he had any of the times he’d been awake before. _I think you are. Comparatively, anyway._

It could sure as hell have been a lot worse. _Kidnapping going pretty smoothly, as far as your basic kidnappings go,_ he thought in Meg’s voice, because he knew she’d have said it if she was here. It made him smile to picture that. _Yeah, I’ll take that, I guess._

Part of him wanted to think very critically about what was happening to him now that he felt like he had more ability to, and another big part of him was saying, “Oh _God_ no; please don’t do that. This is going comparatively okay, but the comparative pool it’s in is stationed squarely in the deep end of ‘really fucking bad,’ and we’re barely keeping it together as-is. Please don’t do this to us. Just zone out again; I beg you,” and that was a pretty convincing argument too.

Telling yourself not to think about shit didn’t really work that well in general though, and didn’t work well at all for Quentin, unfortunately. So instead, he looked around the room, trying really hard to feel curiosity and calmer emotions towards it than the slow building terror his instincts were plugging for.

It was a strange room. Though, he guessed, considering the Legion at least _had_ rooms, they were way ahead of the survivors. Quentin wasn’t sure what it had once been when this place was a lodge, but there were just a lot of boxes in it now. An old, broken tv and ancient VCR player. A personalized snowboard up on the wall. Several pieces of art he felt pretty safe in saying Legion had done themselves. Skulls and stuff, a few of the mask designs. Some of it just spraypainted right on the wall, but more up on chunks of hung cloth. There was the couch which served as a bed, the big easy chair, a lamp of some kind that almost looked homemade sitting up on the boxes, and a little table in another corner. There was a bunch of junk on the floor he could just see past the couch too, like maybe Joey had been taking something apart and trying to put it back together. And then a nice box too—a chest, not like the cardboard boxes piled up in here. _Wonder what’s in all of them? _

A group photo, too. It was at a bad angle from where he was on the couch, but he was already sitting up and cold, so he shifted a bit farther to the left to try and get a good look, because it was four people and he felt pretty sure it was the Legion, and he was curious now. He’d seen the picture before—it was one you could burn as an offering to have a good shot at doing a trial here—or, the less real here. The trial version of Ormond. But the ones they always found was faded, and had the faces of the group scratched out, except the tallest dude—wait, Susie had said names, right? _Shit shit fuck me why wasn’t I listening._ Well, because he’d been freaking out. But. _J names, right? Were they both? Or F names. Jay? Jason? Jackson? Janice? Jer… Julie! That was one of them. That was the girl. And..Ffff…fuck. Frank? No. Really? No. There’s no way. You’re thinking of the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe. It’s Joey and something else with them. Jackson? Jack? Maybe…Shit. What are other F names? It’s not fucking Freddy, you’d have remembered that. Unfortunately. Ffff—shit, I literally can’t think of a third one. How bad did I hit my head, or, are there just not that many?_

Well, Julie and something. Part of him really felt convinced it was Frank but that was the fucking Hardy Boys so it had to be something else. But Jack or whatever his name was was the only one in the photo whose face was still discernable at all on the versions of the photo the survivors got, and only a little chunk of the left side usually, and just barely. This one, the one up on the wall, it was a lot less damaged and faded. Even at a distance, he could recognize Joey and Susie, and after looking at them for a second, he shifted focus to the two he didn’t know at all, thoughtful. All four of them looked…happy. Normal. The older guy reminded him a little bit of Dean, and that distressed him, so he stopped looking at it.

 _At least there’s not…body parts, or blood up on the walls or something,_ he told himself. Maybe that was extreme for somebody’s living quarters, but most serial killers kept trophies, and he’d _seen_ how Krueger lived. And honestly, anything he could pretend was reassuring right now, he was gonna take and pretend with.

Quentin shifted a little on the couch to try to lean closer and felt something more solid than blankets bump his chest and looked down in confusion and saw a little faded teddy bear in his lap.

For a moment, he just stared at it blankly.

_Where the fuck did…? OH._

He’d forgotten, but— _Shit. Shit, how much did I forget??_

Had that actually happened? Had Joey _given_ him this?

 _Is he fucking with me? Because I’m out of it, and it’s easy? Why…the fuck would…?_ Frantically, Quentin replayed only just now activated fresh memories, searching for some kind of mocking or cruel tone to anything Joey had said, and he couldn’t find it, but he also couldn’t be sure exactly how reliable his perception of events was.

Quentin looked back at the bear.

 _He took the sweater off,_ processed Quentin slowly.

He had felt calm, or, under control anyway, emotionally, since Susie left. I mean, for a given ‘this is terrible’ dissociated value of under control. But he’d been handling it—he had thought that he was. But there had been a terror seeped into his bones since he’d woken up here, waiting for stuff to happen, that he only became aware of in its entirety as it eased just the littlest bit. He hadn’t realized it, but he hadn’t thought at all that there was a real chance he was going to survive this. Not deep down. Where his instincts and experience lived and tried to keep him alive. None of it had believed anything Joey had told him. He knew how this went. He’d been here before. He’d been here before too many times.

But he’d been out of it and helpless and the guy could have done anything at all, and what he’d done was taken the stupid fucking sweater off a toy when Quentin had been dumb enough to say out loud that it scared him. To try to make him comfortable. Like that might be a thing worth doing. And…

…It…

Quentin hadn’t really been feeling fear except in bursts before, when someone got close to him, because there had been no point. His body hadn’t thought he had a shot at living and was going to need that.

But he was feeling it now, massively, mixed in with the tiny fragment of relief and hope that had turned it back on, and shaking a little from the intensity of everything going through his head, he carefully did his best to wrap his bound arms around the bear and curled himself around it, sinking back against the couch and into the blankets, ignoring that pain that caused in favor of the tiny bit of comfort it promised.

* * *

_This is going really well, I think! If I just keep this up, nothing can really go wrong here. I just have to be careful! I can—_

“Hey. … Hey! Joey!”

Joey broke his train of thought and shook himself. Man, he’d been _deep_ zoned out. Partially because he was pretty tired, after being up all night, but more trying to plan for the future, and also a little bit because Susie had said “ _Fuck off! If Joey gets private time, so do I! Want to be alone and vibe! Don’t bother me like you did last time I wanted me time or I’ll bite you!”_ which wasn’t a threat he thought would be very easy to fulfil considering they shared a body now, but it was Susie, and she could get super determined and super petty, so he didn’t really want to put that possible bluff to the test. That had been Frank just now though.

 _“Yeah?”_ he called back, trying to get back out of his head fully, metaphorically speaking. The other three were all up—he could sense it. How long had it been since he’d gone deep? Susie had _really_ wanted the body, and to be alone too, so he hadn’t even tried to check on the time or anything. But… God, oof, that had to be…hours ago now, probably. _Shit._ _Man, I hope he’s okay alone like that._

But the survivor probably would be, right? He said he’d healed himself pretty well with that ability thing. Now he just had to keep quiet and rest, and that must be going okay, or Joey’d have been woken up by one of the others flipping out and demanding answers about the injured survivor tied up in his room.

 _I probably should have taped his mouth shut just in case, since he screams so much in his sleep,_ he thought ruefully as he went came back out of the subconscious to join the others. He was…kinda glad he hadn’t just the same, though. It had been neglected because he forgot mostly, but. It wasn’t like he’d have really _wanted_ to do it anyway, and the survivor sure wouldn’t have liked it, and hey, things seem to have gone okay so far, so no harm, no foul, right?

“You’re up,” said Frank, moving to swap places with him and indicating a rift in the center room. Their gateway to a waiting trial.

“Again?” asked Joey in surprise.

“Yeah. You said you wanted to show us some technique you were testing out, didn’t you?” asked Julie in disbelief.

_Fuuhhhh—huuuck I forgot about that._

“Oh, yeah. Totally,” said Joey, lying through his ass. _What’s my technique, what’s my fucking technique??? I don’t fucking have one! FUCK. I’ve been planning the wrong shit for hours! Okay okay okay think think think you can do this just—_

“Okay then,” said Julie, still a note of incredulity in her tone at him for seemingly forgetting after he’d thrown such a fit this morning. Which, fair.

“You gonna tell us when you do whatever it is, or are we gonna be able to tell?” asked Frank. Trying much harder than Julie was to sound somewhat supportive.

Susie was there too, and he could sense her listening, but she was being weirdly quiet and there was some strange energy coming off her. That was fine with him though, since usually she was up for roasting him if he said or did something stupid, and he could do without that right now.

“I’ll tell you,” promised Joey with no idea at all what he was going to do, and trying not to let the slight panic he was feeling hit an emotional level high enough for the others to read.

He swapped with Frank and took the body, watched as the limbs shimmered. This whole setup had taken a long time to get used to, but somehow he had.

Or. He felt like he had, anyway. Except now, thinking about the potential of having to explain any of it to Quentin at some point. Which…suddenly made everything feel _terrible_ again. It sucked enough on its own only one of them could exist physically at a time, and they couldn’t even really like, high-five or anything anymore—best they could usually do was talk to each other. They’d gotten pretty good at kind of sharing the body if they wanted—like, having most of it be somebody’s, but another one of their hands. Julie and Susie used that to hold hands a lot, since it was the only possible way to do it anymore, and Joey wanted to do that too, because he lonely, and hadn’t had anybody to hold hands with or high five or pat on the back or hug or anything in a really long time now, but nobody ever asked him, and he didn’t know how to ask them, so he just never did. He was too worried about sounding like a whiny little bitch or doing something that would embarrass himself or come off wrong and get himself made fun of to even try.

At least being able to talk was nice, now that they’d gotten good at it. It had been hell, getting ripped together into one physical body, when the Entity had taken them. And terrifying. He would _never_ be able to forget how it had felt—Joey _still_ had nightmares about it all the time. But at least it was better than it had been at first. At first, it had been this constant emotional state where you wanted to look at your hands and scream. Because everything was so horrifically broken beyond repair. It had freaked him out; it had freaked them _all_ out. And then there’d been more, been orders, and threats from the Entity, and time pressure, and work. But Frank had pulled them through it. He’d taken most of the work at first, and talked them through things—psyched them up, looked out for them, taken punishments to cover for them. He’d been a really good friend, and a good leader. Joey still felt really bad about some of the stuff he’d been too scared to stop Frank from suffering through those first couple of weeks, even though he knew Frank didn’t hold it against him, or any of them. He’d just said it was his job, since they were his gang, and that had been that.

Still, even after some of the initial terror and horror had worn off, it had been clunky and upsetting and hard getting used to how this whole thing worked. For a long while, they’d only ever had _one_ person use any of the body at all at a time. And that had been okay—the autonomy was nice. If you could still call it autonomy at all. But the longer they’d been here, the better they’d gotten at shifting control between them fast, or even kind of sharing the body. In trials, you weren’t allowed to swap out at all once it started—though you could have your friends help internally—keep an eye out, offer advice—maybe notice a hidden survivor you’d missed. And that helped a lot. Outside of trials, though, they could do whatever with the body, and once they’d all gotten good at swapping control quickly and fluidly, they’d started all talking from it at the same time, no matter who was actually ‘existing,’ or mostly owning the body at the moment. It was kinda weird, because you had to change really fast and only for a second, like lava lamp movement from person to person, and while you were talking, which created a really weird and initially confusing rhythm when you did it with three other people at the same time, but he was used to it now. And it felt a lot less lonely to be able to hear everyone’s voices out loud, or even be able to see them or part of them while they were talking to you usually, instead of just listening to a voice in your head.

Usually.

Now it all…just felt _weird_ to him. Like they were a freak. I mean, they were—the Entity had made them into one, and they were stuck that way. But usually he didn’t think about it like that at all. It had been scary, and he’d hated it, but he didn’t think he’d ever been… _ashamed_ of it before. They had never let the survivors know their power worked like this, sure, but that was so they’d never know there were extra minds inside helping plot—so they didn’t tip their hand. And just because there was a rule against talking to survivors at all. It hadn’t been out of fear or shame. But now, thinking of maybe having to explain it to Quentin if he got wise to it somehow, Joey felt kind of worried that the other guy might be horrified by it. I mean, it sucked— _he_ was horrified by not exactly having his own body anymore too. But that wasn’t the kind of horrified he was worried about. He was kind of worried that, like…he might take it _worse_ than that. Might think that…that even though they were all 100% still individuals, just forced to be sharing a body, Quentin might think they were all just part of the same person now or something, and he was responsible not just for the stuff he did, but for the stuff the other three did too. Or that he was a freak, or gross, or even more bad than he did already. Might not understand it at all, or even be willing to hear it all out. Might… _I don’t know. Be disgusted by me or something. Or…or think. Think…_

…He would just not tell him. Yeah. That was better. It made more sense anyway. Why tell him at all, right? What he didn’t know wouldn’t cause any problems. And he could make sure he didn’t find out, right? So long as he was careful. Yeah. That would work.

 _Gotta focus on other stuff right now anyway,_ Joey told himself as he stepped up to the little portal the Entity provided when it wanted to take them to a trial, wondering which little arena it would be. _Should I burn something?_ Wait, no. His shit was upstairs, in his room, where Quentin was. Nevermind. No burning shit. Bad call bad call.

Still kind of distracted by all the things that had just been running through his head, and trying to do his best to ignore them and collect his thoughts and come up with some new strategy to show his friends, Joey stepped through the portal.

 _It’s okay. You think on your feet well. You can do this,_ he promised himself for reassurance as the world faded to black.

Then the veil of mist dissipated, and he was standing alone in the forest. The one with the bigass old temple in its heart.

 _Not so bad,_ thought Joey, trying to psych himself up. It was a big trial area, so that wasn’t great, but it was also a pretty wide open one—easy to spot people in. And Joey was fast, so the distance was doable. _You got this. All you gotta do is think of a cool new tactic before the trial ends, and you’re good. Just stay calm, don’t fuck up, and it’ll be cool. Let’s do this._

Squaring his shoulders, Joey took off for the far side of the temple at a run.

He had been really ready.

Knife clasped firmly in his hand, adrenaline pumping, senses on high alert. And almost instantly, he’d spotted a survivor on a gen, back to him. The girl with the grey ski cap. And when he started to close in, she turned and saw him, let go of the gen, and booked, but he went after her at a full sprint. She was smart. Made a B-line for the shack, which was the best place for survivors to buy time, and Joey was going to just bite the bullet and go ahead and get it over with, because he almost always got smacked in the head with the stupid fucking pallet at the shack no matter how hard he tried at _some_ point during a trial, but once it was over, it was over, and then as he was following her to it, she fucked up—lost her footing—which almost _never_ happened to survivors anymore, except new ones, and he was able to shoot forward and catch her in the back with his knife. He felt the ability the Entity had given them flood his body, and as the girl screamed and fell against the grass, rolled, and came up bleeding and running again, he was aware of the other heartbeats in the trial around him, and one of them was close. There was a little hill right by him, and someone was on the generator on the far side of it.

Ignoring the girl he’d just injured, knowing she’d have to stop the bleeding before she got back on a gen, and more interested in the long game right now than getting a quick down, Joey veered off for the hill and rounded it in a dead sprint, and the survivor on the gen saw him coming too late and froze up for some reason instead of running, and he was on them then and caught them by the back of their shirt and threw them onto the ground to bring his knife down into before recognizing the girl from earlier. The one who was pretty, and looked just the tiniest bit like Meggie, and had called herself Claudette. The one he’d let walk, and who had smiled at him, and given him a medkit. And almost physically on top of her, supporting himself above her prone body with one arm, the other raised to strike, Joey froze too.

She stared at him in shock. Which was weird. Because the emotion he was so _used_ to seeing on her like all the others was terror. And she _was_ scared, but she _wasn’t_ terrified. She was surprised. Her already big eyes had gone wide and she stayed where he’d thrown her, on her back, gaping up at him, breaths coming in quick, mouth just a little open. And then he saw her go to talk. He could _already_ feel the others inside him thinking, confused he’d balked—he could _sense_ them waiting on him to act. Starting to wonder. And the shape her lips were starting to form was a ‘J’, he realized, and it clicked she was going to say his name, and it would all be over, and terrified, he brought his arm down fast and hard towards her face, going to bury his knife in her forehead—panic instinct carving the surest path from A to B to save himself, which was to immediately kill her—and she screamed.

It was a different scream.

It was a different scream than the one he knew.

It made him sick to hear it. How could it sound so different? It was just a scream—he’d heard her scream _thousands_ of times. But this wasn’t like she had ever sounded before. And he knew it was because it was different. You talked to people differently, depending on who they were. And you would scream differently at a stranger with a grin and a knife, moving to kill you, than you would at a classmate you had considered some kind of friend who cornered you in a dark hallway and you thought might listen and stop and not do it to you. And this was the second kind of scream.

And he stopped.

His momentum had been too strong to stop all the way, so his knife broke the skin on her forehead, but there wasn’t enough power behind it anymore to go through her skull, and there was just blood streaming down her forehead now while she looked up at him, breaths coming in panicked and ragged, and somehow looking confused and terrified and grateful and heartbroken all at the same time.

 _She’s so scared of me, _thought Joey, arm still frozen, something he didn’t like seeping into his veins. Making him sicker. _She’s so scared of me. And she should be. All the things I’ve done to her. I was going to just kill her, because it was easy. And going to work. I would have gotten in trouble with the Entity, because I don’t have permission for a mori, and I knew that, but I was still going to try that instead of even just cutting her or covering her mouth to get her to shut up. Why did it feel so easy?_

He didn’t have time to feel this way; he didn’t have time to wonder. Joey could _feel_ all three of the others questioning and shocked he’d almost broken a rule and about to ask him about things he didn’t have an answer for. And he knew if he didn’t say something quick, the girl—Claudette—would.

_Shit but I have to—I can’t. I-I should have told her to—fuck fuck how can I make sure she doesn’t—?_

“Give me your medkit!” ordered Joey, hit with a stroke of brilliance.

Claudette gaped at him.

 _Shit, I hope she was holding one._ He hadn’t even checked. But she almost always was, and she’d said last time she would start, right? So—

Joey looked over, and sure enough—thank _fucking_ God—she had one. A really nice one too, by the look of it. One of the big ones. _YES._

“G-give you…?” she managed, finding her voice a little. There was fresh blood still coming up and seeping down her face, and he still had his knife pressed into her skin. Joey pulled it back a little to level it at her, and she stared at him, lost, eyes big and worried and afraid as blood trickled down her forehead and past her nose.

“Give it to me, right now, or I’ll put you in so much pain, you’re going to _wish_ it was a mori,” said Joey, trying to sound tough and mean, and praying at the same time she would somehow pick up he was performing. Because he felt bad, after the way she’d…the way last time they’d—

Confused, she searched his face for a second. He thought trying sincerely to figure out what the fuck was going on—if he was messing with her, or being cruel on purpose because of last time, or had forgotten her, or something else. And he wanted to…to smile, or—or wink, or. _Something,_ to let her know. But he was afraid if he did, she’d give it away, and the others would know, and-

Still very lost and very afraid, the girl decided for some reason to comply, no questions asked. Shakily, she moved her right hand over in close, and presented the box to him with trembling fingers.

 _“…What the fuck exactly are you doing?”_ came Frank’s voice finally in his head.

_Uhhhhh…._

There was no fucking way he was answering that with the girl watching. ‘ _Girl’? You know her name. Why don’t you think of her as it?_

Why didn’t he?

Joey lowered the knife and took the medkit. Like last trial, where usually the thing would have weighed about 200 tons for him if he’d tried to lift it, it felt normal, like a medkit should feel. Like the last one had. _Oh thank God, it worked! I did it! Fuck yeah! I—Right, later—still have things going on—_

“Good,” said Joey, straightening up and getting off her. She propped herself up on an arm a little, but stayed on the ground beneath him, staring up at him with huge eyes and blood pouring down her face. Lost, and scared, and waiting for any kind of sign he was the same person she’d talked to this morning. It made him feel like shit.

_M…Maybe there’s some way to…_

Going with the only idea he had, Joey fixed his eyes on her and said, “I told you last time not to _say anything,_ yeah? Same deal. You try to say anything, hoping the Entity’s watching, and I’ll make you pay for it. You give me what I want, I let you run, and give you a head start before I follow. Got it?”

A half-truth. It would make more sense to her than trying to imply the rest of Legion might be listening anyway.

And she got it.

He felt immense relief as she looked back up at him and nodded, and the fear and confusion that had been there became understanding. She was looking at him like she had before now, like she had when she had walked away last time, and he had to fight the urge to smile.

“I understand,” she whispered, he was pretty sure _trying_ to sound scared now, but doing such a good job if the look in her eyes hadn’t been _so_ different, he’d have been convinced himself, “C-can I go?” she added hesitantly.

“Go,” agreed Joey, giving her a nod, “I’ll give you thirty seconds.”

She stumbled to her feet and backed up, then turned and tore off around the far side of the hill. As Joey watched her go, a generator lit off in the same direction, not too far away, so Joey quickly stowed the medkit, kicked the gen Claudette had been on, then broke back into a run and headed for the one that had just lit.

 _“Was…that the thing?”_ asked Julie inside his head, confused.

“Yeah,” whispered Joey, “Pretty sick, right?”

“ _…What do you even want a medkit for?”_ asked Frank.

“I don’t!” replied Joey, “I mean, I-I want the needle and thread I guess, since there’s probably one in here, but mostly that was just to show you.”

“ _Show us?”_ echoed Susie, almost a hint of fascination in her voice.

“Yeah. That’s what I found out,” said Joey with gusto, “You know how we could never pick up any of their shit, even if they dropped it?”

“ _…Yes,_ ” came Frank’s answer after a second.

There was no one at the lit generator now, but Joey could see scratch marks, so he turned and veered off after them. They _couldn’t_ have gotten far.

“Well, I found out that if you make a survivor _give_ you their item, you can keep it!” said Joey.

“ _…So. Your new tactic is… bullying the people we hunt into giving us their shit?” _asked Frank. Which was. Not what he’d expected Frank to say. “ _…Isn’t that a little unnecessary? I mean, I guess it would be nice to be able to take one of those really fucked up flashlights and snap it in half partway through a trial,”_ he conceded, “ _But. I’m not sure that’s an edge we need. I mean. It’s not like it’s got no upsides, but if it takes this long every time, there’s not gonna be much point to it either. In the time it takes to wrestle an annoying item from a survivor for good, they’ll light two gens and we’ll be fucked.”_

 _Uh._ Shit, Frank was right. He’d thought this would go over well, but. His best friend had a point. _Shit shit shit shit—_

“Well, I know we don’t _need it,_ ” started Joey, hoping to think of a great addition to follow that statement up with in the middle of speaking, when Susie cut in.

“— _He wants his own toolboxes._ ”

“ _What?_ ” asked Julie.

“ _Guys, he’s always wanted tools since we got here. So he can make us better shit,_” said Susie, “ _And tinker around like he used to. Duh. Also probably because he gets bored. Which we all do, all the time. And I want some of it too! I’d love new stuff. We used to get to make crap all the time bumming around Ormond back home, and now we’re just…fucking bored all the time in Ormond with nothing to do but practice for trials and sit around. With saws and hammers and shit, we could make another bedframe even, so Joey doesn’t have to sleep on a couch! I could get a desk to draw on! Maybe we could even finally fix the TV! What part of this are you not getting?”_

There was an _immediate,_ and _extremely positive_ mood shift universally inside the body.

Holy fuck, his accidental guardian angel. Susie! That had been the most amazing thing he’d ever seen—he could have kissed her, if they’d had separate bodies and physically been able, and she wasn’t probably so completely into girls and not dudes that she’d have just been mad if he did and gone and rinsed her mouth out an uncalled for number of times after. Okay, he could have…fuck, he didn’t know. What _did_ Susie like? Given her exclusive DJ privileges in the car for a whole month! There, that was pretty good _and_ a thing she’d have liked. If they still had a car. Whatever! He’d workshop it.

 _I’m gonna do something so nice for you later! _thought Joey excitedly, mentally filing _what_ to do for her into his increasingly exponentially growing stack of things to figure out. He didn’t really care though—he was just relieved that shit had gone so well. And then he spotted a survivor up ahead and felt even better. It was the short girl that was quick on gens and kind of an asshole. As in, she would openly mock you if you fucked up, and didn’t seem to remotely fear the rage and recompense that always brought on. Which admittedly was kind of hardcore, but also super _fucking_ annoying.

“Exactly!” Joey whispered, shifting back into trial mode mentally, “It’s gonna be so cool once I get a good set of tools!” _Note to self. Talk to Claudette about bringing me tools at some point when nobody else is riding shotgun._

“ _Do you really think you can fix the TV?_ ” asked Julie, an undertone of hopeful seeping into her voice. _Holy shit, that’s one of like ten times my whole life I got Julie to be pumped about something!_

“Uhhh, yeah—if there’s an electronics manual in the lodge, or in that big library in the Institute somewhere—and maybe even without it! Depends on what’s broken—I never looked hard before since the screen was, but I can try! I gotta focus now, though,” he added quickly. _OH! OH SHIT. GREAT IDEA._ “And uh,” he added in a whisper, because he was getting real close to the tiny mean girl now, and she’d started to run, but he still didn’t want to risk her overhearing, “If you guys could maybe give me space when I work, too?”

“You mean you _don’t_ want us breathing down your neck and adding pressure?” asked Susie with mock-sincerity, being wildly helpful for some reason for the second time today. _Thank GOD she’s in a weird mood or something! She’s never this nice to me. But that’s perfect!_

“I mean, not really,” he said like he didn’t really want to. He was on top of the girl then, and had to shut up and focus. She’d dashed into the temple, but he caught up to her before she could make it into the underbelly past the stairs, and got a hit in. She managed to keep going, screaming and stumbling before bolting forward with renewed speed, spurred on by fear. Joey was faster, though, thanks to the Entity, and he made it down the steps right on her heels and dashed after her without thinking when she made a quick lunge forward and left, and took a pallet to his face for his trouble and came up cursing as she vanished deeper into the temple. Those things _fucking hurt._ And he was super pissed now.

Still, he’d already let them get a gen, and he couldn’t afford to waste time, so he tried to stay focused and ignore the anger, and ran on into the underbelly of the temple. This one was smart, and quick, and she almost got him at another pallet, but he lunged just a little too fast for her this time, and brought his hunting knife deep into the side of her chest, serrated blade ripping and tearing things on its way back out, and she screamed in agony and collapsed to the ground this time, clinging to her wound and choking back tears. Joey had never really looked at her very hard—I mean, he didn’t really look at _any_ of them. Didn’t want to. But he was now—was starting too, but as soon as he realized that, he stopped himself and hefted her up onto his shoulder while keeping his eyes _squarely_ fixed on the far wall. There was a hook nearby, and he went for it as fast as possible and rammed her through it and then turned to run back up in search of others before she’d even finished screaming, and it felt a lot easier then, once he was away from there and above ground. This was just routine. It was a thing he knew how to do, right? A thing he was pretty damn good at. Sure, it was weird, and new, and shitty, but it was life. And it wasn’t his job to care about anybody himself, and the rest of Legion. They tried to kill, the survivors tried to flee. That was how trials worked. If he got nobody, _he’d_ be in trouble. It was simple, and the rest of it wasn’t his problem.

Joey went back to hunting in earnest, and the rest of Legion dropped the earlier conversation and focused on helping him hunt, which was ideal, and he fell into regular trial mode easily. Got the first girl he’d seen, the one with the ski cap, and hooked her. Then finally found the fourth member of the trial, which turned out to be one of the older ones—guy dressed like a cop, badge and everything—while in a frenzy and chasing heartbeats. The cop got the girl with the ski cap off her hook, but since Joey heard him coming, he leapt a window in the temple and was right on them just as the girl was being set on the ground, and the cop whirled around and tried to protect her—to stay in the way and be the one who got stabbed.

Usually, Joey would have tried to hit both, or play it smart and go after the one already wounded if he knew the person drawing fire was a harder one to catch, because it was his best shot at winning, but he was in a generous mood, and the guy looked so desperate to be able to do it, so he didn’t even really make it a challenge to divert his attention. Just slashed the man across the chest and then chased him down and got him in the back a few times before dragging him to the grass outside beneath a tree and getting a deep enough blow in his stomach he stopped struggling and was easier to get up on a hook.

 _It feels weird to be doing this,_ thought Joey, leaving the guy and heading off towards the closest gen. It shouldn’t have. He’d done it so many times. But. _Just shake it off,_ he tried telling himself. And that kind of worked, in between _seeing_ the survivors.

He was starting to get really worried that him just kind of talking to two of them a handful of times now had somehow deeply fucked up his ability to hunt by the time he finally realized it wasn’t him.

Or maybe more accurately, not _just_ him. The reason he kept feeling weird and getting kind of out of the right headspace on sight was that _they_ were weird on sight. It took him a while to pick up on, through his focus on hunting, but even the ones who weren’t the girl he—weren’t Claudette—they were all acting different. They recognized him. I mean, of course they did—they’d seen him before. But it was not the same kind of recognition. Everyone looked at him like they had…context. It took him a while to think of the right word for the look, but it felt really right when he finally did. They were looking at him like things were different, fundamentally, between them. Maybe curious, maybe angry, maybe confused, or distressed, or uncertain, or all of the above. But they were looking at him not like he was ‘a Legion’. They were looking at him like he was Joey, the Legion member who had one of their friends and supposedly had offered to help him make it back alive, and given him a place to hide out, and who had talked to one of their own last trial, and was a wild card they couldn’t trust but were being forced to, and had to be careful around, and had no idea anymore exactly how to act or react to.

Which was so _fucking_ weird.

Sure, he’d told Claudette to tell them they didn’t have to get caught—and they weren’t trying to. Well, maybe the sneaky girl with the ski cap was running less well than usual, but the others sure weren’t. They were just being fucking weird. But still. It was…weird, and…

…More than a little uncomfortable.

But also, and Joey really didn’t understand this part, but it felt kind of…exciting almost. Like, everything had been a rut, a day on repeat, and now something was a little different. And it wasn’t like he knew any of them, or they knew him, but the interaction was a little different. Maybe that was bad. It was probably going to be easier to do all this if things _didn’t_ get any more human or personal. But like. …He didn’t know. It was just…different. It was…

It was like. Like they were still scared of him. But like. The girl with the ski cap let him catch her, he was pretty sure. The same way he’d been worried Claudette was going to last time. Joey was pretty sure she’d done it because she was afraid of making him mad, if he didn’t do well in the trial, and maybe having that anger taken out on her missing friend. But he could tell it was intentional, because of the _way_ she fucked up when he caught her, and the kind of braced and scared look on her face, instead of the normal trial kinds of fear or anger. Because she hadn’t _really_ fucked up; she’d made a choice and resigned herself to it. And so, when he saw the angry little one who was fast on gens coming at him with a flashlight to try and save her, he let the girl do it. Because he didn’t…I mean, he couldn’t _stop_ doing the trial _._ But he was doing pretty well so far, because they were doing the trial so bad. And most of them had been on a hook so long by now they’d die instantly if he got them up again. So, thing were going pretty well for him. And this wasn’t _how_ he wanted to win, so he’d felt charitable, and let the short angry girl blind him and buy time for the other girl to struggle out of his grip. And when his eyes had quit burning, he’d felt kind of proud of that, and glanced after them as they ran off, and the girl with the ski cap had been looking back, and she’d looked surprised and confused, but in that same way just a little that Quentin and Claudette had—the way you looked at someone you hadn’t expected to ever show you mercy, but had. A surprised that was almost like gratefulness. Or being touched. Not quite, but. It—it was still a _really_ good feeling. And new.

And of course, he couldn’t fuck around and let them _go_. And he was going to have to start doing better than two kills per trial or he would be in for it before long, but hey, twice wasn’t gonna kill him, right? So he focused his efforts on the cop, who seemed more than willing to throw himself in front of everyone anyway, and the angry short one who did _not_ seem to like him any more than before, and killed both on hooks. He also managed to basically avoid Claudette all trial, which he was proud of, because he uh…Like, again, he _knew_ he was gonna have to go back to killing her, and he would, because he didn’t want to be in trouble. But the _idea_ of killing her had become kind of distasteful now, and he felt like that could be a problem for tomorrow’s Joey and today’s Joey could just get to feel good, and that would be okay.

They were down to the end game by the time he remembered to consider the fact that his _friends_ were all watching too and might have their own thoughts and suspicions on how he was acting. But apparently they’d been occupied by a different subject, because they hit one gen left and he was on his way to check the remaining three when Susie coughed and went, “So uh. Are you gonna bully us into a toolbox, or not?” and the ‘Hey I am doing great and feeling awesome’ haze Joey’d been in shattered like a pane of ice and was replaced by the much less fun panic mode of ‘Oh yeah oh shit I forgot about you guys’.

“Yeah!” said Joey hurriedly, intensely nervous immediately. _Shit shit shit._ “I uh—I just haven’t seen anybody with—”

“—The girl you killed had a toolbox,” observed Julie.

_FUCK. Did sh—yeah, yeah, fuck, she did. Good one, too. SHIT. Uh._

“W-well yeah,” said Joey, spotting fresh tracks and kicking the almost finished gen the survivor had been at before taking off after them, incredibly anxious now. “But that one’s stubborn—I’d have wasted _way_ too much time, and she might not have even given it to me. Which would be a really bad story for her to get to tell back at their campfire. You gotta be careful which one you pick.”

This seemed to be accepted as a logical and understandable response by the others, thank God.

_Okay so. Plan. I have to grab one of the two left and bully them into first finding and then giving me a toolbox. God damn it. :’-] I don’t know how to do that. I should pick Claudette, right? Because she’ll work with me and the other one might not or might say too much. Fuck I’m gonna have to bully her really hard again and drag her around then…_

But there wasn’t really a way out of that, was there? And she kind of knew—I mean, she’d probably assume the _Entity_ was watching, but she’d understand. Right? _God damn it I should have given her way more specific instructions,_ thought Joey, hitting some real deep ‘well, in hindsight’ flavored regret.

Unfortunately, the one whose tracks he’d been chasing down came into line of sight just then, and it was the other one. The girl with the beanie, who was so good at sneaking. Joey cursed his luck and went after her just the same, because what choice did he have? And then across the trial grounds, the last gen lit and the gates powered on. _FUCK._

Breaking into a frenzy, Joey tore after the girl as she made a b-line for the temple to try and lose him, or at least get him away from the doors while her friend opened one. He could leave her, and watch the doors, try to intercept them when they eventually had to go for one. Which was risky. Too risky, as far away as the doors were. So. …He could get this one, probably, and then use her as bait? The pretty—Claudette came after others even when it was stupid, like Quentin did—that’s why he—well, before he knew who either of them was—he’d liked getting them in trials. Free kills.

That felt a little bit guilty now, but he decided not to think about that and pushed the feeling down deep.

Okay, so. That would work. Probably. But how could he be sure it would? _Shit._ Uh. Well, if it didn’t, he could take this one and try to bully _her_ , but, what if she said too much? _Shit shit shit._

It was about to be decision time though, because he was almost on top of her. Still regrettably unsure _what_ he was going to do at all, Joey closed the last five feet as she went for a vault at one of the windowsills in the temple’s wall, and caught her in the back as she went through. She hit the ground with a cry and fucking somehow _sped up,_ though. Shit-fuck—he’d forgotten this one could do this. She took falls like a circus performer. Cursing, Joey vaulted after her, praying the door she was heading for would _not_ be the one her friend had decided to go open.

Unfortunately, it was.

The girl with the beanie made for the door with all her might, leaking blood, and Joey followed as fast as he could. _Come on! Come on come on come on—_

They hit the entryway and it was close. For a moment, Joey didn’t think he was going to reach her in time, but as she reached the threshold of the far exit, his momentum brought him close enough to grab her and his fingers felt the fabric of the back of her flannel and started to close around it. Time felt slowed for him. He could see her face, full of relief and hope and excitement, believing she’d made it. This moment in a trial always brought him vindication and pride. It felt so great, snatching a survivor who thought they’d beat you, right at the exit. Proving them wrong, showing how much better he was, how powerful, how on top. But it felt different this time. He was just kind of thinking about how she’d been surprised and almost grateful or something like it he still didn’t have quite the right word for when he’d let her get free. And the way she looked really happy right now, about to make it, thinking she had.

So he missed his grab. Intentionally let his fingers slip on the fabric. And he saw the instant of panic as she felt the slight resistance on her shirt, then the relief and excitement as she made it past and the spikes separating killers from following them out of a trial sprung up to block him. She even had a moment to spin on her heel and look back at him, breathing hard and bleeding and relieved and happy. He could tell _she_ felt vindicated, because _she_ was the one who’d worked hard and won. And then the wounds closed up on her body and she vanished, and Joey was alone in the entryway. But he didn’t mind. Usually it would have pissed him off a survivor was proud they beat him, but she hadn’t really. He’d let her go, and she just didn’t know it, so _he’d_ won. Just he’d chosen to win in a weird way. And it had felt good. He felt proud of that—of the way she’d looked. Made another person happy, like he never got to do anymore. _I know I can’t keep this up, but it’s a nice once to get to remember,_ he thought to himself contentedly.

“ _Why are you so happy she got away?_ ” asked Frank inside his head like ‘ _wtf bro what gives?’_

 _God shit damn it I forgot they could feel emotions in me like this,_ thought Joey, smile freezing. “Because,” he started, no idea at all what words were going to come after ‘because’.

“ _Awwww, you let that one go earlier too, didn’t you? You think she’s cute_ ,” said Susie.

 _Oh my God I love you,_ thought Joey, _Susie really accidentally saved my ass today._

“ _Ew. You don’t really?_ ” asked Julie.

Honestly, Joey was pretty neutral on that girl as far as the survivors went and if there had been one he thought was a knockout it would have been Claudette or the hot blonde with curly hair and a sleeve tattoo, or Jane Romero, but he grabbed the lifeline and hung on tight.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” he mumbled.

“ _Gross,_ ” said Frank very matter of factly, “ _Put a damper on that. We have to keep a strong distinction between them and us, or this is going to get really messy really fast, and we’re going to end up hurt. Or dead. Don’t start showing a specific one favor. Seriously. I know it seems harmless, but it wouldn’t stay that way. You know she could never have any interest in you, and none of it would ever go anywhere but where it just went. For her. For us, it could get really bad. So, stop. I’m not kidding. Don’t do this kind of shit again. You’ll get hurt, or killed_.”

“Come on, it’s not that big a deal every so often, is it?” asked Joey, turning back from the gate and starting to be a little confused the trial hadn’t ended yet. He could feel all three of them judging him, but it didn’t matter to him at all, because somehow he was basically in the clear, and all he felt about it was happy.

“ _No, Frank…kind of has a point,_ ” said Susie, who Joey didn’t think he’d ever heard utter _those_ words before, and with way less bite than he’d have expected, because Susie really liked being sarcastic at people who weren’t Julie. “ _I mean, where did you think this would go?_ ” she asked after a second kind of quietly.

“I didn’t expect it to ‘go’ anywhere,” said Joey, sort of confused now, “Look, can we just drop it?”

“ _Yeah. So long as you don’t do it again,_” agreed Frank tiredly.

“ _You didn’t get us tools, though,_ ” said Julie with bitter disappointment, mind still wholly focused on the issue she actually cared about right now.

The trial still hadn’t ended, and maybe that was why Joey was being more attentive than he usually would have in a position like this. It _should_ all be over, because there’d been no sign of Claudette, and an open gate, so he could only have assumed she’d already gone through, but he wasn’t quite sure, and then he saw her. Crouched behind the little bit of wall that jutted out by the doorway to the exit. She was so quiet and little that even on the lookout he almost hadn’t spotted her at all—probably wouldn’t have, except he’d felt eyes on him and glanced over, and there she was.

 _Un_ fortunately for Joey, she was closer to the exit than he was now, since he’d started walking and gone several steps past, and she probably could have made a break for it and gotten into the exit and out through it without even taking a wound as she made it over the border, but for some reason, even knowing she’d been spotted, she hesitated when their eyes met. Joey didn’t.

Turning on a dime, Joey bolted for her hiding place at full speed. Caught off guard, she was slow to dart forward and lost the lead she should have had, and Joey was on her just shy of the threshold to the entryway. As he got in range, she sensed his lunge and raised an arm to try to shield herself but kept going, hoping for a fighting chance at making it out the exit even after taking a hit, but instead of stabbing her, Joey caught her by the wrist and she yelped as he jerked her back and used his momentum to slam into her and pin her against the little wall by the door switch, bringing the hand with the knife up between her and the exit as they impacted.

“Don’t move!” shouted Joey, “Don’t try to run from me!”

Pinned down, Claudette flinched and shut her eyes impulsively when he yelled, then cracked them open again and looked at him in confusion from under worried brows. She didn’t try to run, though.

 _Ooooh kay okay okay. Shit._ There had to be a good way to do this.

“W…W-what do you want?” she asked shakily in a little whisper when a few seconds passed, and he hadn’t made a move.

“A toolbox,” said Joey. This had _seemed_ like a really great idea when he saw her. The sooner he got tools, the sooner he had an excuse to be alone in his room with everyone leaving him alone, which would help with Quentin’s whole situation a _lot—_ and get him way more than his fair share of time using the body. And Claudette was by far the safest, and as far as he knew, easiest, person to get to do this for him, and he had no idea when he could be sure of getting her again in a trial. Sure, she was one of the survivors he got more often than a lot of the others, but there were a lot of them, and it wasn’t like he’d get to take _every_ trial Legion took anyway—especially after taking to in a row, so. …But uh. But now suddenly after saying that out loud, he was a little bit worried this had been a really bad idea. Maybe he should have waited for a time he could find some way to convince the rest of Legion not to help, so there was no chance they’d hear something and catch on, and just been willing to roll the dice on survivors and the existence of a tool box in exchange. _But I need one, and fast. As fast as possible. No, this was the right call. I just have to…think of a way to make her know how she has to act and can’t talk to me._

“A toolbox?” she echoed, totally lost, “…W…what do you need a toolbox for?”

He could feel irritation flare up in Frank at that. She was too comfortable, too familiar. Not afraid enough of him, and this was too congenial. _Shit! Shit he’s gonna—_

“You don’t have to know!” hissed Joey with venom, using his shoulder to push her harder against the wall while keeping her pinned in, and brining his knife against the skin at her throat. She immediately shut her eyes and started trembling. “You don’t get to _ask_ me,” he continued, working hard to sound as mean and terrifying and violent as possible. It definitely felt like it was working. “I want what I want, and you don’t ask questions. You seem to be operating under some kind of idea that this is a dialogue—it’s not. We don’t negotiate. I don’t make deals. I tell you what to do, and either you do it, or you get _really_ hurt. That’s the _only_ choice you get to make. Am I clear?”

Claudette took a few shaky breaths, eyes still squeezed shut, and then made herself open them and whisper, “Y-yes,” doing her best to hold perfectly still to keep from provoking him.

 _Shit. She looks scared for real again, like really bad, even more than a normal trial scared,_ thought Joey, excitement he’d been feeling at performing well enough to get Frank’s approval fading at the sight, _Like. Before ‘Please don’t touch me’ scared. I’m just another killer scared._ Scared, but a little confused too, or hurt, like she’d thought she knew him to be different. A-and sure, that was probably gonna be inevitable, because he’d been ducking her all day to avoid this, but he sure as fuck couldn’t do that _every_ trial. But still, he didn’t want it to happen this _soon._ He had liked the way she’d seemed to almost like him. _Crap. Crap. Is there any way I can…?_

Getting a kind of idea, Joey fixed his eyes on hers and held them. “Good. You better remember what I told you last time,” he said, voice firm and threatening and pointed, “Because I’m not messing around, and unless you start to do what I want and keep acting _exactly_ like you always have, there’s gonna be trouble. I’ll give you your own personal welcome. to. hell. You get me?”

He’d delivered the words pretty damn harshly, and hadn’t had time to think through his phrasing like very well at _all_ before saying that, so he was worried then that she wouldn’t be able to understand what he was trying to say. Just might think he really wanted her to know he was gonna be the same as always.

But there was recognition in her eyes when he said, ‘welcome to hell’ and her expression changed. He felt her stop trembling against him.

“I get you,” she answered quietly. And she looked scared again, convincingly, but he could feel her breathing, and it was calmer.

 _YES. You got it,_ thought Joey, over the moon at his success and fighting the very strong urge to smile at her like she was his partner halfway through pulling off a successful two-man con. Which, in a way, she was.

“Good,” said Joey, loosening his grip and moving back then, but keeping his hand around her wrist. Just a little curious even though he knew she was a flight risk, since he could tell the others weren’t keyed into his physical sensations, he loosened his grip on her wrist so much she could easily have pulled away and made a clean and successful break for the entryway beside them.

She didn’t.

 _She gets it. She gets all of it. Oh I love this girl she’s so smart,_ he thought almost giddily, _perfect._ Making sure to keep his voice hostile for the sake of his audience of friends, Joey forced a cold expression onto his face and said, “Come get me a toolbox, or I’ll make you suffer so much you’re gonna be wishing for _months_ that you had.”

She still looked pretty damn confused, but she didn’t argue. Started to nod, actually, then paused, looked up at him awkwardly, and said, “I-I. I will—I’ll try. B-but I don’t know where to look for one. Chests can be-be hard to find. There’s usually a chest in the temple—I-I don’t know if it’ll have tools in it, but I can look. I can start there.”

 _Oh! Oh, right._ “No, I know where one is,” said Joey, “The girl I sacrificed had one.”

Claudette looked _profoundly_ confused, and then sad a half-second after, when he mentioned her friend. And she glanced away from him. He didn’t like that—he felt bad, and then annoyed, because why should he feel bad about it? How dare she judge him? It was just his job and if her fucking friend couldn’t run away well enough, that was her problem. Trials were a zero-sum game.

“Come on,” said Joey, tightening his grip on her wrist again and tugging her more roughly than necessary after himself. She hadn’t expected that at all, and stumbled and started to fall, and he caught her on instinct—which, consequently, almost got her an accidental stab wound. He managed to maneuver the knife _not_ into her side at the last second though and still catch an arm, and she clung to his forearm with the hand she had free and hung there for a second before scrambling back to her feet. She looked so confused, and nervous still, but she looked grateful for just a split second too, almost like maybe she might have wanted to smile. Then the expression was replaced by fear again—which Joey was glad she could do, because the last thing he needed was the others to get wise to anything—but he’d still seen it. And he was glad he had, and the anger and irritation faded.

Turning away from her and trying to remember how to focus, Joey picked out the hook the other survivor girl had died on earlier in the far distance and started to walk quickly toward it. Claudette went with him without resistance, and after a few seconds he relaxed his grip again, a little guilty about before and probably having hurt her wrist just because he was annoyed. He glanced over to try and check if being tugged around by the wrist looked like it hurt, and to his relief she didn’t look like she was in pain. Actually, he’d kind of intentionally ignored her all trial _super_ successfully after their first interaction, so come to think of it the only injury she’d _gotten_ this trial at all was the place he’d cut her face right at the start. Joey hadn’t really noticed before, but her way of fixing up that cut had apparently been just wiping off most of the blood and then just applying a little actual bandaid to the middle of her forehead, which was an almost _unbelievably_ cute look on her. He felt his face heat up and instinctively cleared his throat and glanced away.

“There,” he said as they got close enough to the hook to see the discarded toolbox by the broken and bloodied chunk of metal that had fallen to the ground the way all hooks except the ones in the basement did after a sacrifice.

Claudette looked at the hook with a distressed grimace, and he felt some kind of negative emotion again, but wasn’t totally sure this time which one. She glanced over at him then, though, and down at the wrist he was still keeping a hold on, and that distracted him from finding out.

“Go on,” said Joey, letting go of her, “But don’t try anything. You got it?” He held up the knife to strengthen the point.

She gave a nod. Joey let go, and she glanced at her wrist, then carefully went the last two steps to the hook and picked up the toolbox and turned back to him.

“You…couldn’t just get it for yourself?” she asked curiously, holding it out.

“No,” said Joey without thinking until after he’d said it all that maybe he shouldn’t answer because it might piss Frank off, “It’s like pallets before they get knocked over. You guys only.”

“Oh,” said Claudette, very interested by this.

Nervous he’d been too nice, Joey snatched the box from her. He would have opened it, because he actually _did_ really want tools and this looked like one of the really nice toolboxes the survivors sometimes had, and he was super curious about what was in there, but he had to be able to pretend he had the stuff to patch up a TV whether he did or not so that he’d have an excuse to be alone in his room unsupervised for hours, so he kept it shut.

“Good,” said Joey, working hard to sound tough. He paused then, because he hadn’t thought past this part. … _Shit. Shit, I want to let her go again because this is gonna suck if I just kill her now, especially after she did what I wanted, but Frank is gonna want me to kill her, so I guess I better. But…_

“ _What’s wrong with you?” _asked Julie without any bite, just perplexed.

 _I can’t answer you or she’s gonna notice, you know that,_ thought Joey in distress. He’d hooked the medkit to his shoulder strap earlier to keep his hands free, and he did the same with the toolbox now. Which worked, but also fucking hurt when he moved because it would bang against his ribcage with every step, and was _way_ heavier than the medkit had been.

“Okay, come on,” he ordered, motioning her back over. She came, and Joey decided that would make it too fucked up to kill her this time and he was just gonna have to wait for a trial where he didn’t talk to her and that was how it was gonna just need to be. Instead, he caught her by the wrist again and tugged her performatively closer without using as much force as it _looked_ like he was, and held the knife up close. She startled a little, but he had seen her truly panicked several times recently now, and he could tell this wasn’t it. To her, this was still co-conspirators pulling off a two-man con to fool the Entity and help her friend, where he was a scary killer who for some reason was choosing this one time to be kind and merciful, and she was ready to do what it took even if she had to get hurt, because she thought she could trust him a little, and so he couldn’t really bring himself to let it be anything but that either. For a moment, he just held the knife near her face and made eye contact, eyes narrowed, while she gazed back with her big dark pretty eyes he felt like he’d never totally clocked before.

“Go on,” he said, shoving her backwards and releasing her.

She stumbled and caught herself, then blinked at him in surprise.

“This time,” he warned, leveling the knife at her.

“ _Joey, what are you doing?”_ asked Frank in a mixture of exhaustion and annoyance.

 _I’ll tell you in a second,_ thought Joey, who’d actually come up with a good lie this time and was feeling pretty solid about this decision. “Go. Before I change my mind. You didn’t give me any trouble, so I’m going to reward you this once. Because I feel like it. But next time, it’s not gonna matter to me at _all_ that this happened. Now get moving. Or I’ll decide to come after you and throw you on a hook.”

On impulse she smiled at him with a mixture of appreciation and relief, then she gave him a nod, turned tail, and ran for the far gate. Joey held still and watched her go.

“ _Joey, what did I literally just tell you?” _asked Frank in annoyance.

“I know, I know,” promised Joey, “But it’s just smart—right? If we always kill them anyway if we take shit from them, they’re gonna start resisting because like, they’ll die either way, right? So why not say ‘fuck you’ to us? This gives them a reason to do what we want, and do it fast, so we don’t have to spend a bunch of time stabbing somebody until they do what we say every time we want a tool. Otherwise, if we want something, we’ll only ever be able to get it from the last survivor alive so we can have all the time we need, or we’ll waste a ton of time and they’ll light gens.”

“ _I don’t really think we should be doing this period_ ,” said Frank, dissatisfied, “ _After you get what you need for the TV_ ,” he added quickly, sensing Julie about to join in to argue **_very_** opinionatedly on this point. “ _But, fine. I guess that makes sense if you only do it once or twice. Just. Don’t make a habit of this, okay? The Entity might not always be watchful, but it isn’t stupid. It’ll fucking catch you if things get very off-balance—it’ll sense it. I’ve seen it happen. And if it does? You’ll be fucked, and I won’t be able to protect you. Okay? And I don’t want that and neither do you, so you have got to take this seriously. It’s probably fine just this once or twice to get what you need, but if you make it into a habit, they’ll turn it against you. I’m not joking about this. You **have** to take it seriously_.”

“Okay,” promised Joey, not really worried at all, but trying to sound sincere so Frank would feel heard, “I will. Promise. I just—you know. I wanted to get what I needed. Last thing I need is them getting vengeful and trying to like, booby-trap a toolbox in case I steal it.”

“ _I mean. Do you seriously think they would do that?_” asked Julie, teasing, “ _Trap every single toolbox in every trial just on the off-chance it’s you in a grabby-fingers mood, and throw every one of those 99% of trials it’s not because they came ridiculously unequipped?_ ”

“Okay, okay! You made your point!” said Joey, “I’m sorry! It made sense to me at the time.”

“ _Whatever; who cares,_ ” said Susie, coming in clutch yet again, “ _All I really care about is that he got tools to try and fix the TV. Fuck yeah._ ”

“ _Seconded,_ ” agreed Julie.

Frank sighed. “ _Yeah, okay, whatever. Like I said, it’s probably fine. Just. Watch yourself, okay? Last thing you need is them thinking you’re weak and manipulatable. Give people an inch and they walk all over you._ ”

“Will do,” agreed Joey, relived. And pretty fucking proud of himself. The trial grounds around him still hadn’t started to dissipate, but Joey knew about how far it had been to the door and how long it would take Claudette to open that one if it happened to still be closed, so there couldn’t be _much_ time left. He’d basically made it through.

 _Well, all things considered, I’d say I did pretty fucking good,_ thought Joey proudly. Not a bad run. _And I can go see how Quentin’s doing when I get back now._ Poor guy was probably still feeling terrible. Joey didn’t really have any medical skills beyond wrapping a cut, though, so he wasn’t sure how to help. He would have liked to, though. Wished he could. It had been a kind of fun and exciting morning for him, and he felt like in a weird way he’d almost made a couple new friends—I mean, okay, definitely not—he wasn’t delusional. That was crazy. But. You know. It had still been fun to get to make them have good days.

One of the trees at the edge of the area caught his eye then, and Joey sheathed his knife, went into frenzy and made a rush at it, jumped, and just managed to snag one of the lower hanging but still pretty substantially too far off the ground to reach normally lower boughs. It bent under his weight, and he felt his feet touch the ground again as it lowered with him, then began to look over the plant he was clinging to with giddy desperation carefully.

“ _What are you doing?_” asked Susie curiously.

“Gettin a snack,” said Joey like _duh._ This was _definitely_ an apple tree—he knew what fucking apples looked like well enough to be certain of that—but he wasn’t super used to apples being this shade of yellow, and took a second before selecting a one that seemed ripe to him, and snapping it off the tree one-handed and putting it in his hoodie pocket.

“… _I mean, okay. I kinda want one too now though,_ ” said Susie.

Joey grinned. He’d wanted to do something nice for her anyway, so he snagged another one for her from the bough before letting go and watching it rocket up with far more speed than expected. Though to his great surprise, this did not seem to dislodge any extra fruit. “I’ll leave it in your room,” he promised, holding it up for her to see. As he did, the trial began to fade around him.

“ _Okay. That mean you want to do this right now? With the TV?_” asked Frank tiredly but with a lot less annoyance now as the trial finished vanishing around them and they came back into existence at home in the sitting room of Ormond Lodge.

“Yeah, if that’s okay,” said Joey hopefully.

“ _Fine by me,_ ” said Frank, “ _Sure you don’t want help though? I’m not you, but I’ve had to duct-tape fix my fair share of shit before, so I could probably help._ ”

“ _Yeah, happy to try and be a…nother pair of hands? I guess? Or something. If you end up needing it,_ ” agreed Julie, who Joey couldn’t really remember ever offering to help him before. _Damn. She must be really bored. _He kinda got that though. It fucking _sucked_ being alone in Ormond all the time. Honestly, if they could fix the TV, he didn’t care what was on any of the old VHS tapes they’d found in suitcases. _Anything_ to take the edge off the monotony here would be amazing.

“I want to try on my own first, but I’ll let you know if I need you,” promised Joey.

“ _Okay then,_ ” said Frank, “ _Good luck._ ”

“ _Mmmhmm,_ ” agreed Julie, and then they were gone into the subconscious, and he was left only with Susie.

 _I think they took that pretty well,_ Joey decided, proud of himself, _Not bad. Why is she still here though. Does she want her apple?_

“Hey, uh,” offered Susie out loud as the body flickered between the two of their shapes and she vied to speak for real, instead of just as a thought in his head, “I…wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”

“…For…what?” asked Joey, super lost.

“I dunno,” said Susie quietly, shrugging it off, “Stuff I say, I guess. That I don’t know you as well as I should maybe, even though we’re stuck in a body together. That I never tried to.”

“….Oh,” said Joey, even more confused. “…I mean, it’s okay. I guess I haven’t really tried either. And you’re not _that_ mean to me. Plus, I can be pretty mean to you sometimes too.” _Actually a lot, since getting here. Now that I think about it…Did we all get meaner?_

Susie took the form for a moment and shrugged, then exhaled, making a long, sad, tired sound. “Not really. But thanks. I guess I just wanted to say that and that like…I guess I misjudged you.”

“You did?” asked Joey, even _more_ more confused.

“And you’re actually not so bad,” continued Susie, ignoring his interjection, “Like a lot more not so bad than I thought. So like. I guess that’s nice. Especially with this shitshow. Everything’s been so confusing and fucked up since coming here. But. It makes me glad. To like, see that with you. I think. Or something. Uhm…” She looked at her shoes.

_I don’t know what the fuck is happening and why she’s being so nice. Am I dying or something? Is she dying? Where did this come from??? There has to be something huge I am just totally forgetting happened. Shit, I hope it actually happened and she didn’t like, talk to me while I was spacing out and think I was being a good listener or something. I’d feel so bad now._

“Anyway, that was all,” Susie continued quickly after a moment, straightening up again and tugging on a piece of her pink hair self-consciously before letting it go, “Just. I’m sorry I don’t know you better I guess, and thought you sucked a lot-”

“—Wait, you did?”

“—and—well, yeah, I mean, not more than most people, but I guess like I kinda think most guys suck, or they did in Ormond anyway, but—uhm. Anyway. I wish that I got to know you more, and I just wanted to say that I…was wrong. And I’m sorry. And, you’re actually pretty decent, and. And just, try not to do anything stupid, please?”

“Wait, what?” asked Joey.

“It would really suck if you got hurt. Okay, that was it, bye,” said Susie quickly.

“Wait, _what?_ ” said Joey again, “Got hurt?”

Susie heard him but she didn’t answer. She peaced out hard and went into the subconscious like the other two had.

“Wait! Stupid like what?” he asked frantically, “Like electrocuting myself? Susie??”

No answer.

“Stupid like how? What are you…?”

But apparently the conversation was over now. Because he was super alone, and she was _not_ coming back.

“Well what the fuck was that about?” Joey mumbled to himself, perplexed. That had been weirdly nice _and_ weirdly cryptic. _Did she know somebody who got electrocuted once, so now she’s freaking out??? Am I just really tired so things seem weirder to me than they are?? That seemed really weird though. Was it not? …Oh well, I guess. At least she said she likes me more now. That’s a win. And she wants to hang out sometime, so maybe I’ll be less lonely. And she could like, show me how to do charcoal drawing stuff like she likes to do. …Or maybe she also just really wants the TV or something, like Julie does. Or is really happy with me because Julie is happy???_ That _did_ sound like Susie’s MO, to be honest, so that might be it. Anyway, he could find that out later. Whatever the reason, it felt pretty nice and he was gonna consider it a win, and he was definitely gonna leave her her apple and do something else nice he thought of, because she’d accidentally saved his ass like four times today.

 _I wouldn’t really mind getting to know her better too,_ decided Joey, smiling at the thought and turning and heading for the staircase, _I guess we really still don’t know each other that well. Even though we’re around each other at a lot. _It wasn’t like he knew nothing about her, but like. He knew the music she liked and the food she ordered. Not the kind of stuff she thought about, or wanted in life, or that kind of thing. Not _really_ knew. And Susie was right—that kind of was a shame. It wasn’t like he didn’t like her or something, and he’d never thought she disliked him—well, before coming here anyway. But she’d been around to hang with Julie, and he’d been around to hang with Frank, so they hadn’t had a lot in common. Plus, people had always kind of assumed they were dating, and that used to piss Susie off a lot, and like, he got it, because he knew she liked girls, but it had still kinda hurt his feelings a little _how_ offended she got if anybody thought she was with him. Sometimes it had felt kind of unnecessary—like she wasn’t just mad because he was a dude, but because he was a dude she wouldn’t have ever dated even if she liked them, or something. There had been other times she had been really cool and fun, though. He’d only seen her dance once, at home with Julie, but she was _really_ fucking good at some of the moves. And she was smart and funny, and had a very good throwing arm.

 _Yeah,_ he decided, smiling at the thought of getting to maybe know her better, and very happy she’d decided for whatever reason that he might be worth her time, _She’s like, really weird, but not in a bad way. It’d probably be really fun to hang out a little more._

He still had no idea what she’d been going on about, but, whatever, right? Right now, he had things to do.

That was gonna be a thing for Later Joey to figure out, though. Right Now Joey had to—

“— _I went into your room and saw you had a person in there._ ”

Joey felt his eyes bug out. “WHAT?” _SHIT. FUCK._ Panicking, he stopped on the stairs, heart racing. When had Susie come back? She’d left? When had she—? _Oh no._

Panicked, Joey turned and bolted for his room, terrified he was going to find a corpse on the floor, but Susie called out to him before he’d even made it to the top floor.

“—Wait! Stop! It’s not like that!”

He stopped, out of breath with a hand on the banister, waiting for an explanation and still freaking out.

“ _It’s okay! I didn’t kill him,_ ” hissed Susie, talking internally again and trying to keep quiet.

“You didn’t?” asked Joey in confusion.

“ _No!_ ” snapped Susie, miffed at the accusation.

“Oh. Sorry, I-” started Joey.

“— _No_ ,” interrupted Susie, “ _It’s okay; I thought you’d do something really evil too_.”

“Oh. Okay. Wait, you did?” asked Joey in surprise.

“ _Yes! But like, I already apologized, so I’d appreciate it if you quit making it such a big deal_ ,” said Susie.

“Okay,” said Joey because he was taking too much in at once to say anything else. “Uhm…So you—Wait, why were you in my room?”

“ _Because you were being super fucking shady about everything!”_ snapped Susie, “ _Like, learn how to tell a good lie!_ ”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not great at lying to my best friends all the time like you can,” said Joey.

“ _Oh fuck off,_ ” shot back Susie.

“But you really didn’t…? Hurt him?” Joey checked.

“ _No. No—I didn’t. Is that so hard to believe?_ ” she replied, miffed.

 _Kind of._ “No. I guess not,” said Joey, “Uhm. Thanks for not. –Wait—did you tell Julie? Susie, please, please! You can’t tell her! If you tell her, she’ll tell Frank, and—”

“ _—Yeah, and your dude will die—I’m not fucking stupid, Joey,_ ” cut in Susie.

“You mean you didn’t tell?” asked Joey, thoroughly surprised, “And you’re not gonna? Not even Julie?”

She took the body again for a second to give a long, deep sigh. Then said, “No,” very quietly, and sunk back into internal dialogue again, “ _Secret’s safe with me. For now, anyway. And like, unless you do something really dumb, it’ll stay that way. I don’t like, want to get you in trouble._ ”

“Thank you,” said Joey, kind of stunned.

“ _Yeah whatever. Don’t make a big deal out of it,”_ said Susie awkwardly.

“Seriously, I…” He could feel how uncomfortable she was though, so he stopped, and just smiled, panic dissipating. “Uhm,” he started instead after a second, “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“ _I dunno…I—wanted to…think and stuff, I guess,”_ said Susie. He was going to ask why she changed her mind, but she seemed to sense that question coming at her in some form and beat him to it. “ _—But. Your survivor was gonna tell you sometime anyway, so I figured to prevent a crisis I better do it now. And also like…I thought about it, and I think I can help._ ”

Joey blinked. “Help?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” said Susie like _duh,_ “ _I can do things—_”

“—No, I mean, you _want_ to?” asked Joey, surprised and kind of touched.

“ _…_ ” She froze up. “… _I. I mean yeah, why not, right? You need it, don’t you?_” she tried miserably finally, “ _I figured I can keep watch. On the other two, so you can at least get a warning if someone is going to try to come check in, and maybe you won’t get caught, and that guy won’t die, and none of us get in trouble!_ ”

“That’s **awesome**!” said Joey excitedly, so fast he almost interrupted her, “Thank you so much! That’s perfect!”

The anxiety he’d been feeling _oozing_ off her calmed back down and her emotional state became a little bit more pleased instead. “Yeah?” she asked, flickering into control of the body for a moment.

“Totally!” said Joey, extremely happy and relieved, “If we work together, we can pull it off way easier. Seriously—I owe you. You’re the best.” He smiled. Then the smile vanished. “Wait holy shit—all that stuff you said today, did you—?”

“Fuckin du _mbass_ ,” said Susie kind of affectionately, transitioning into internal dialogue on the last word and giving him back full control.

“I-come on, I’m not a dumbass!” protested Joey, cheeks getting hot.

“ _Well, not any more than the rest of us,_ ” agreed Susie, “ _I’ll give you that._ ”

He felt a little better.

“ _But yeah, I was doing that to help out. You’re welcome,_ ” she added, pleased with herself.

 _Ho-ly shit. How the hell am I gonna repay her?_ thought Joey kind of happily. It would be a pain to figure that out, but that was like, the nicest thing anybody had done for him in forever, so he didn’t mind. And also holy _shit_ Susie was good at thinking on her feet.

“I owe you,” whispered Joey, turning and climbing the last few stairs to the second floor, “Big time.”

“ _Yeah you do,_ ” said Susie proudly, “… _But. Don’t worry about it. I got your back. Just like, be careful, okay?_ ”

“Careful?” asked Joey, pausing hopefully out of earshot of his room. _Right. She said something about that before when she was being all cryptic._

“ _Yeah,_ ” came Susie’s voice, “ _With the survivor. Like, I’m glad you’re letting him stay, but like—and it hurts me to say this—but Frank’s not wrong. It’s better if you talk to him as little as possible. All this is…already so much shit without knowing anything about them. You’re gonna end up getting yourself into trouble if you talk to him too much. Try not to get invested._”

“…Okay,” said Joey, not sure how else to respond, “…Does that mean you don’t want to come talk to him at all sometime?”

“ _What did I just say!”_ said Susie, exasperated. But she also seemed kind of happy about it, which he didn’t get, and she just sighed. “ _Whatever. Just. Please be smart about this._ ”

“I will,” promised Joey, “I know what I’m doing. I got things under control.”

“ _…Okay then,_ ” she said like she didn’t 100% believe it, but didn’t disbelieve it enough to argue about it any more, “ _Then I got your back. Good luck._ ”

Joey smiled. “Thanks. And uh—for everything.”

“ _You got it._ ”

Joey smiled again and turned down the hall and headed for his room. This was great! He had a partner now. Somebody to hang out in the subconscious and keep an eye out. Odds of success had gone _way_ up.

“ _—Joey?_ ”

He paused. This was the second time he’d thought she’d left for good. Last time she’d popped in with intensity. This time she just sounded scared and sad.

“What?” he asked, confused and kind of worried. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard Susie sound like that. _Maybe. I-I guess I have. Way back…_ During the first few weeks. And that last night, in Ormond—the real Ormond. Usually even though she was pretty short and not that strong, she _sounded_ tough. Right now she just sounded small.

“… _Am I a really bad person?”_ It had been a question, there was no denying that, but somehow, it hadn’t sounded like one.

“…No. No, you’re not,” said Joey reassuringly, glancing at his doorway and lowering his voice a little for privacy in case the survivor was awake, then taking a step back and crouching down against the railing while he listened, because it’s what he would have done on the phone, having a conversation like this, and it was instinctive to him.

Susie was quiet.

“Susie?” asked Joey worriedly after a second.

“… _Am I too bad?_” she asked, voice so quiet it was almost hard to hear.

“Too bad?” echoed Joey, confused.

“ _To be different again?_ ” she asked in a voice that sounded dead.

Joey didn’t know how to respond to that.

“ _…Okay,_ ” she said very quietly after a second, and he sensed her start to go.

“—Wait,” he whispered. She paused. “No.”

“ _No?_ ”

“No, you’re not,” said Joey.

He wasn’t sure, because he wasn’t even sure he totally understood the question, let alone what had brought it on, but he could tell it mattered a lot to Susie, and he was pretty sure it was what she needed to hear.

“ _You’re just saying that,_ ” said Susie, voice a mixture of sadness and affection, like she appreciated the gesture, but that didn’t make it any less empty, “ _Because you know it’s what I wanted you to say_.”

“I’m not,” said Joey, which should have been a lie, considering his thought process. But, it didn’t _feel_ like a lie when he said it. He thought maybe it wasn’t.

“ _How can you tell, then?_ ” asked Susie.

“Because…if you were, you wouldn’t ask,” said Joey, not really sure where this answer had come from, but very sure it was right once it was out. He felt good about it.

And he sensed Susie smile. “ _I hope so. Thanks, Joey._ ”

“You too,” said Joey, relieved and happy he seemed to have helped. She vanished to the subconscious, _probably_ for good this time, and Joey straightened up again and glanced at the doorway to his room and the hanging quilt that served as his door.

He wanted to go in, but he was thinking about her question.

It shouldn’t have stuck on him like this. Susie had always been this way—she was emotional, and anxious, and had never had a stomach for a lot of the stuff they did. Back in Ormond, when the Janitor had walked in on them and they’d had to finish him off, she’d flat out refused, and Frank had had to force her.

Joey wasn’t like that. He hadn’t _wanted_ to do it either, sure, but he was a lot more practical than Susie. He got that the world wasn’t fair to anybody, and there was a lot more than just good and bad, and life here was what they had to do, and he was fine with it.

So he couldn’t understand why a part of him was asking “ _Am I?_ ”

 _Of course you aren’t,_ he told himself, staring off into space, _You’re not bad at all. You have to do some bad things, because life here sucks, but it’s more complicated than that. You’re who you always have been. Life isn’t fair, so why should we be, right? It’s not our fault we’re the hunters. And it’s not our fault they’re the prey._

Frank said that kind of stuff a lot, and usually it made sense to him.

The medkit and the toolbox he’d gained last trial were still clipped to his shoulder strap, and Joey wanted a second, so he took off the toolbox and knelt and opened it. It _was_ one of the nice ones. Some of the supplies were low—screws especially—but the base tools? Screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers? All here, in a couple sizes—plus a little solder! It was _excellent_. And he was happy, until he noticed a little picture on the internal lid. Just in ink pen, and not very good—a doodle—but it was two girls. He was pretty sure actually two who’d been in the trial today—the little angry one, and the one with the skicap. As little doodle people, holding hands and saying, “Fuck yeah! Good luck toolbox!” together in a tiny speech bubble.

Joey closed the lid.

To have something else to do, he took the medkit down too after a second, and exhaled and opened it—half expecting there to be something inside he _also_ hadn’t really wanted to see. And there was something weird. It took him a second to notice it—at first he was just taking in labels on bandaid boxes, and gauze rolls, and some ointments, needle, threat, scissors. Crushable little head and ice packs. Then he read a word and realized the little note on top of the stack wasn’t a manual or something. It was a _note_ -note.

It was surreal. She’d told him she was gonna start bringing good medkits when she could, in case she saw him again—sure. She _had_ said that. But she couldn’t have known she’d get him twice the same day, basically back-to-back. She couldn’t have known any trial would necessarily be him at all. It wasn’t like she’d seen him and had time to add this either—he’d stolen it from her right at trial start. So knowing her odds were tiny, just on that 1% off-chance he did show up and it ended up with him, she’d still left a note.

Not a long note. All it said was, “Thank you, Joey. I can’t ever say enough to really thank you for saving my friend, but it means everything.” 

But, that was a lot.

And Joey smiled and picked up the note and read it a few times, then carefully folded it and slipped it into one of his pockets, picked up the medkit and toolbox, and headed into his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two of Adiris' add-ons in DbD are an apple, one of which is fresh and described as being perfectly ripe. It's probably a Malus Orientalis, or Eastern Crabapple. Which is a large and yellow apple, and a very old species, which grows in Turkey and a lot of the surrounding countries. While I'm sure the illustration for the apple offering is only coincidentally a yellow-tier offering, I wouldn't be surprised if the choice to /make/ it one was intentional, since that's the apple color naturally, and I think that is very cute. They are very tart. Since the map Joey ended up on was Adiris', while in-game they just use Anna's forest for some reason and superimpose the temple onto it, I've always headcanoned that it would be a more appropriate forest to Adiris' own memories and life. And Adiris' life is terrible, so she definitely gets an apple tree.
> 
> Susie's an interesting character. In Darkness Among Us, when Frank impulsively stabs someone during a robbery, while all four are clearly freaked out, and Julie and Joey both have moments of hesitation or distress, she's the /only/ member who flatly refuses to take part in the murder, and is visibly horrified by it. While the Legion is already one of the most /interesting/ killers in the realm, considering how very different their past is from their present, Susie in that unlikely gang is a second anomaly of her own. But despite being the one who refused to take part, she ends up in the realm just the same, and starts killing like all the rest. I have to imagine that while it was quite the journey and traumatic experience for all of them, that Susie's personal experience was something else again. There's a lot to wonder about. If she resisted, and how long, and when she stopped, why, if it keeps her up, or if she's found a way to move past. Though, while I think it would be most noticeable with Susie, I think those questions apply pretty deeply to all of them. It's also always been funny to me that Susie and Joey are more like each other than either of the other two, but probably usually have the least to do with each other out of the whole group. Funny, and a little bit sad.
> 
> While I really enjoy both versions, and after the whole 'Chimera' Blight skin, I think it's kind of implied it's likely Legion exists as four independent people, when I started writing for DbD, we really had no idea which it was, and honestly, them just being four people who don't work together at all in trials seems kind of pointless--especially for a group named 'Legion,' you know? Like that's not a legion, lol, it's four kids swapping off shifts every 6 hours. So I still prefer the 'Stuck sharing one body' interpretation most of the time. It makes sense to me, because it's horrific, and the Entity never skips a chance to be as awful as it can, and to keep people as trapped as inhumanly possible. And how are you going to run away from that? Even if you found some magic way home, you'd be four people in one body. The physical situation alone just zaps so much hope. Not to mention the fear, lack of autonomy even bodily, and intense respect for the Entity's power to hurt them it would instill. It's smart. And awful, and beyond cruel. But smart. It also makes it a lot harder for anyone to ever even be a maybe risk of trying to defy it or help the survivors, because how long could they keep a secret like that from three other people sharing a form? Which is...pretty dismal for all of Legion. And pretty fucked of the Entity.
> 
> Hey! It's been a bit. I moved across the country, and life has been a lot, but here's a new chapter! I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so much for the feedback and for reading my stuff. : ) I really hope you enjoy this chapter of New Dawn Fades, and the next ones too. Thank you again--really, support means more than I know how to verbalize well. It's invaluable to me, and I appreciate it so much. Enjoy! <3  
> OH! And if you're in the mood for music, I've curated myself a JoeyQuin playlist for writing and also general vibing. (( https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RuZ3UIHvqxrsaVVo6PAv7 ))


	8. Up Against Your Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin and Joey have a real discussion and start trying to find some footing while stuck together.

Mind still lingering on things Susie had said, Joey pulled back the hanging blanket and slipped inside his room.

He’d been expecting to find Quentin asleep, but to his surprise, the survivor was already sitting up and watching the doorway nervously when he stepped in, though he seemed relieved to see Joey, which was good at least. And he could tell from the part of an ear that wasn’t totally beneath the covers that he’d kept the bear.

“Hey,” said Joey, setting the toolbox on the floor and then holding up a hand in greeting.

The survivor gave him a nod in return. He still looked a little anxious and wan, but Joey hoped that mostly had to do with his general last couple hours, not him appearing in the doorway.

“I’m surprised you’re awake,” said Joey, walking over and sitting down in the chair by the couch again, moving stuff off it and sliding it back a little before he did to give the survivor a bit more space, “You’re pretty good at that—staying awake.”

Quentin got a look on his face like he didn’t quite know how to take that, and just kind of inclined his head after a second. Still didn’t say anything, though, just kept watching Joey like he was waiting for him to do something.

“Uhm,” said Joey after a second, trying to seem casual and not at all unsure how to respond to this himself, “H-how are you feeling? Throw up again or anything?”

Quentin shook his head. “No, I’m…doing okay.”

 _Thank God, he finally said something,_ thought Joey in relief.

“Well, that’s good,” replied Joey, doing his best to give him a reassuring smile.

The survivor nodded, then glanced down for a second, then back up, more anxious than before. “Uhm…One of the uh, the others came in here.”

_OH. Right._

“Yeah,” said Joey, accidentally cutting off something else the survivor had been about to say. He paused to give the guy a chance to say it now, but he didn’t, so Joey kept going. “Susie, right?”

Quentin nodded again.

“Well, don’t worry,” said Joey, “I know I told you you’d be in trouble if she found out you were here, and I thought you would be, but she’s being surprisingly cool about it. We talked about stuff, and she’s gonna help us keep this a secret. So, it’s actually kind of good that she did.”

That seemed to be a big relief to the survivor. He let out a breath and nodded, more to himself than to Joey, and then glanced up again. “Good. I’m, uh. …I’m glad.”

There was silence.

“Uh… —Oh! I got you this,” said Joey, holding up the medkit he was still hanging on to.

Quentin glanced down at it like he didn’t know how to respond to that, then back up at Joey.

“Since you’re hurt,” said Joey, a little confused and nervous he was having to explain this, “It’s from your friend. The pretty one.” _FUCK why did you say that??? You know her name now; he’s gonna think you’re weird! Why the fuck did you say it that way??_

“Claudette?” checked Quentin, a little more at ease now with the news.

_Oh good he still knew who I meant and he didn’t seem to think it was weird._

“Yeah—uhhh—yeah, Claudette,” hurried Joey, trying to play that off.

“You had her again in a trial? Today?” asked Quentin as it clicked, surprised.

“Yeah,” said Joey.

“Wow, that’s…some wildly good luck,” observed Quentin, somewhere else in his head and blinking at nothing.

“Well, actually not that much, really,” said Joey.

Quentin glanced up, surprised.

“We tend to have our like, favorites to get?” said Joey before thinking, “Who we tend to get a lot. So.”

The color drained out of Quentin’s face and he stared at him.

Joey felt his face heat up and was suddenly deeply uncomfortable. _Shit. What did I—?_

“You. …You _pick_ which ones of us you want to kill?” asked Quentin, dismay in his tone and revulsion in his eyes.

And fear again too, Joey thought.

“W—I mean—it’s—not _exactly,_ ” said Joey quickly, trying to play it off and gesturing as he spoke because it was instinctive, but Quentin flinched as soon as he moved his arm, so Joey glanced at his hand and then stopped and made himself lower them both into his lap again and keep them there. “Uhm,” tried Joey, keeping more still, “It’s more like…I mean, we _can_ ask for a specific survivor, if we’ve been doing really well in trials. I don’t think I’ve ever really done that, though, myself. But we also just seem to get the ones we like to—that, that we uh, w-we, uh—do the best against? Maybe? The Entity seems to have some that it sends in with each of us a lot.”

“…” Quentin sat there looking at him, a distressed but hard to read expression on his face. Like he’d pulled way back into a corner mentally, as far as he could go from here and Joey. “…Is that why…Is that why I _get_ you so much? You specifically? Because you…you _like_ killing me?”

 _Uh._ Joey made a sound he wasn’t sure what word it had been meant to be, thoughts jumbling as he tried to get a good response together and out. “W—no, not—it’s not exactly like that!” he tried to reassure. Quentin was still looking at him exactly the same way. He was maybe a little more awake than he’d been before, so there was more coherence and a little less blind fear, but there was something like disgust there now in its place. Or hatred, or both. “I didn’t ‘like’ killing you or something—I don’t especially ‘like’ killing Claudette! I…” _Shit shit; how do I explain that? I… _It wasn’t like he _had_ especially liked killing either of them, though. He’d just liked _getting_ them. Because they were easy. But he wasn’t sure if that was a better or worse thing to say than what he already had.

The bound survivor was still watching him from where he was stuck propped up on the couch, looking tired and hurt and scared and a lot of other things too though. So.

“It was just, like. S-some people are easier to deal with,” tried Joey. _FUCK. COULD you have said that any more wrong?_

Whatever the expression on Quentin’s face was, the intensity of the emotion doubled, and it was not good.

“N-Not like-” tried Joey. _Fuck. Shit. Why am I so bad at this??_ “—uh—Not like you’re looking at me like! I— Look, it’s just…It’s not easy to do this, okay!” He felt frantic, and he knew he sounded that way a little too. “Not just like, it’s hard to do _one_ way either. It’s hard in a lot of ways! A-and like, it’s not actually that easy to chase you guys! And-and if we do a bad job, we get fucked up by the Entity, and none of us want that to happen, so yeah, if—if we figure out who we’re _good_ at going against, like, like good at countering or whatever? We like to get them! Because it means we’re a lot less likely to do a bad job! It’s not like I _like_ hurting you or something, I just—I like not being afraid I’m gonna get burned by the Entity after a trial.”

Joey stopped, nervous, and glanced over to see if that had been any better. It was probably _way_ more than he should have said. The look on Quentin’s face wasn’t great, but it _was_ different, so, maybe that was something.

For a few long seconds, Quentin was quiet. Then finally, he said, “…You realize it means the opposite for us, right?” He was watching Joey. Something pulled back in his voice that made him almost seem calm. Calm and sad, or maybe just quiet and sad. “If you’re going against somebody it’s really easy for you to murder, you know that means we’re getting mowed down by you. Dying. You know that hurts, right? As much as…whatever the fuck the Entity does to you.”

… Well. Of course he did. He wasn’t really used to thinking of it like that, but yeah. It wasn’t like that was his fault though.

“And we don’t get to choose,” continued Quentin after a second. He glanced away then, down at the fabric on the blue blanket over him. “Who we go up against at all.”

 _Oh._ Yeah…of…of course they didn’t. Right. _I guess that’s not very fair. _Not that any of this was, to them. Or to him, but, especially to them. He felt bad. He didn’t like feeling bad about this. _It’s not my fault. I didn’t ask for this. I never wanted to be here like this at all! I’m just doing what I have to to survive! _

But maybe that last part was his fault, at least a little. Maybe a lot. He had killed this specific survivor a _lot_ of times. Because it was easy. Because he always came back in to save people, like Claudette did, even when it was suicide. He felt very sure he shouldn’t tell him that, though. Not because he was afraid he might stop and Joey would get less easy kills in future—for one, he felt sure even knowing it was suicidal and stupid, the guy would still do it anyway. He figured Quentin probably already knew that. But. If he was already going to do it, Joey felt like it would be kind of fucked up of him to make the guy feel bad about it. It was a kind of nice thing he did, going back like that. Joey thought if he was a survivor himself, he’d have liked having Quentin in trials with him, because he’d know even if he was in real trouble, there would be someone who would try to save him, and a small chance that might be enough to get him out. Why make him maybe ashamed or sad about that? It must already be a hard thing to always do.

“…” Joey thought about answering the question, started to, then glanced away himself and swallowed. Thinking. What _would_ he say to that? That he was sorry? He couldn’t keep saying that to a survivor. Was he sorry, anyway? _…Maybe. …Maybe a little…_ “Well, I don’t really control that. The Entity does,” said Joey instead finally, glancing down at the medkit again to be able not to look at Quentin, “Anyway, your friend sent this for you.”

Quentin was quiet for a long handful of seconds, and Joey glanced up at him once, and saw him watching. Almost somber looking. Thinking, he was pretty sure. Or waiting. But eventually he said, “… Can you open it and show me what’s inside it?” in a very quiet voice, like he’d given up on something, and Joey was at once both relieved and a little bit regretful—about the guy’s tone and the look on his face—but he didn’t know what else he could say, so he just gave a nod and opened the medkit.

With the hefty thing tilted to be easier to see, Quentin tried to scoot a little forward on the couch to get a closer. For a few moments, his eyes scanned the contents of the box, then he glanced up at Joey and quietly said, “Uhm. Is there anything under the boxes? I can’t see a whole lot past the, uh…”

“Oh! Right—here.” Joey glanced over the layout of supplies, and moved a few things, then looked over at Quentin for confirmation this was helping. It seemed to be. And quickly, Joey went through the rest of the contents of the medkit with him. Holding up stuff if Quentin needed a better view, or to see under it, and the tension in the room eased a bit by the time they were finished. Joey felt immensely relieved, even if it was just a little change.

“So, this’ll help?” asked Joey hopefully, moving the box to sit on an arm of the chair.

“Yeah,” said Quentin automatically, an expression on his face that was a little chagrined along with grateful and affectionate, somewhere far away in his head, “She was way too generous. We barely have any meds for pain, ever, and I know what her stash looked like. She gave me a lot of the best stuff she’s _ever_ had. Probably gave the other half to Dwight and doesn’t have anything now…”

That…made sense to Joey, given his brief interactions with that girl. She seemed really nice and really generous, and definitely cared a lot about her friends, and a lot more than she did about herself. Kind of sad though. There had only been two pills Quentin had identified as strong pain meds in there, and he said that it was half of what she had, which meant that what, four opiates was the most any survivor had ever had stashed away? And the girl had been here when Joey first arrived too. Must have been here a _really_ long time. _I guess…the medical supplies they get out here must not be that good,_ he thought, glancing over at the medkit thoughtfully. It actually _had_ a lot of supplies. Just, most of them were needle and thread and tools to sew wounds easier, medical tape to hold scrapes shut, bandages, slings, sponges for cleaning a wound. Not…not actual meds. It was stuff to let you stop bleeding, not make you feel better. _…Oh. Because it likes them to feel as much pain as possible…_

Yeah. I mean, he knew that. He knew it liked them to not just chase or hurt the survivors, but fuck with them too. Make it bad, make it intense. ‘Not enough it would break them, but enough it would push them close.’ That had been one of many sets of instructions in their time here. Joey had never really done that though, beyond like, hyping up the competitive angle, because the one time he’d tried, it had made him feel like a fucking cultist who kidnapped teenage girls to go cut open on a slab of rock and carve runes into or something, and that had creeped him out so much he hadn’t been able to sleep the next four nights at all, and he’d never even _tried_ again after how it had made him feel. But. He knew they were _supposed_ to make it intense. Thankfully, it seemed the Entity had accepted ‘intensely competitive’ from him, and he’d mostly gotten to forget about other, worse things, but. He’d felt less bad about his current way of doing trials before he actually saw what was in these medkits…

“Do you want one?” asked Joey, trying to forget things and refocus on Quentin, “Or half of one, if you want them to last?”

Quentin considered that, painfully, and then shook his head. “No. No, I should save them.”

“For what?” asked Joey, disbelieving, “You’re gonna heal up, so you’re in the most pain you’re gonna be right now.”

“For…I don’t know—for someone else,” suggested Quentin uncomfortably, “I can bring them back with me. I shouldn’t use those.”

“Why not?” argued Joey, almost annoyed, “When’s the last time one of you got hurt this bad outside a trial?”

“I…I mean,“ started Quentin, shooting him a quick, puzzled look over his reacting strongly to this, before avoiding looking his way again, “you don’t know when something will happen-“

“—So _never_ ,” said Joey.

“No. No, not—”

“—Someone’s been hurt like you are?” asked Joey, not buying it, “Vomiting up blood and almost dying.”

“…” Quentin seemed distressed. He tensed up and fixed his gaze firmly on the grain of the blanket. “Look, it doesn’t matter—and anyway, Dwight might be hurt worse than me. He might still need them when I get back—”

“—Dude, what’s _wrong_ with you?” asked Joey in disbelief. Quentin glanced up at him in surprise. “Your girl _gave me_ this, _for you_. You said she’s your best doctor, and _she_ thinks you need it.”

“She hasn’t even seen—”

“—You got shot through the stomach!” exploded Joey, “An object went _through_ your torso! An object shot by a gun! You got fucking harpooned! And you got your head hit with something, and your arm cut, your side sliced open, bruises everywhere, I kicked you in your gunshot wound! And you think you’re not hurt enough to take a pill for it? Who the fuck needs it more?”

Quentin just stared at him.

“Who?” said Joey again, distressed, “You’re being crazy about this! Do you really think you’re _ever_ gonna be so hurt again you wish you didn’t take that now, when you were almost dead? Seriously? You’re like—you’re like one of those people who plays video games and never ever uses a healing potion even in the last boss fight because you ‘might need it later’—You need it NOW.”

“I’m not!” argued Quentin, taken aback, “I just—I’m doing okay. I mean, it hurts, sure, but I don’t _need_ that to survive, and maybe there will be a time someone else needs it more. You don’t know how scarce that stuff is—”

“—Someone else?” echoed Joey, and Quentin stopped.

Joey squinted at him, hard, while Quentin shifted uncomfortably and then finally looked away at the wall.

“…You’re not one of the people who never uses a potion in a game. You never use anything on _yourself,_ ” said Joey.

Quentin looked back up immediately, an expression on his face like he was being attacked.

_Oh, I’m right. What the fuck, man? Even here?_

“Are you serious?” asked Joey, “Oh my god. That’s why you won’t use this, isn’t it?”

The survivor didn’t answer, just looked at him some kind of way.

“Why not?” pressed Joey, less forceful, more persuasive, since he had realized he was kind of shouting at the person he’d kind of attacked and tied up in a room he couldn’t get out of, and he didn’t want to flip him out again on accident. And also because he felt like this was more likely to work. “Look. I get you don’t want to waste stuff, but you’re not like, being selfish taking pain meds even _if_ they’re rare. You need them.”

Quentin looked away.

Joey waited a second, but Quentin didn’t look back or say anything, so he just picked up the extra mug of water he’d left up here before, which the survivor hadn’t touched while he was gone, took one of the pills in his other hand, and held them out.

Sensing the movement, Quentin looked back at him and took that in, then shook his head. “I don’t need it.”

“Why? Why not?” pushed Joey.

“Because I just don’t,” said Quentin helplessly, shrugging a bit with the little shoulder movement he still had bound, “I’m alive without them.”

“Dude, you can have things you don’t _need_ to survive,” said Joey, “That’s what it’s _for._ It’s a _pain_ med. It’s to make pain less bad, not to make you not die.”

For a second, Quentin held his gaze, then he glanced down and away again.

 _Why are you like this?_ thought Joey in frustration and some much larger amount of distress.

“I’m right, so why not?” he pleaded, “You’re miserable. I don’t even know you, and _I_ can tell you’re miserable. You look like hell and you clearly feel like shit. Just take it. It’s not like you’re taking much, anyway. There’s only two pills.”

“I just. I would rather save them,” said Quentin.

“For when?” asked Joey.

“For…somebody else,” said Quentin, “Someone who needs them more. We go through a lot of shit—”

“—YOU go through a lot of shit! You’re part of ‘we’!” shot back Joey, “You’re an equal part of ‘we’! How would somebody need them more?!” There was no attempt to answer. “By not being you?!”

For a moment Quentin just looked at him, then past him, at one of the walls, and kind of at nothing, thinking, and Joey stopped and let him. Feeling a little bad, although, less for kind of shouting at him, and more because he could tell he must be right.

 _What kind of messed up in the head gets you like that?_ wondered Joey as he watched him, _What happens to you to make you think that way?_ He tried to make sure in his head he wouldn’t. Tried to guess if any of his friends would. He didn’t think so. I mean sure, if like, Susie was hurt worse than him at the same time, or he and Frank both got hurt, or Julie, or any of them, he hoped—he _thought_ he’d try to split supplies, or give them to them if they were hurt worse and needed it. But for a hypothetical future ‘maybe’? Fuck no. That was…stupid.

For a second, he watched Quentin, and the look on his face.

And…sad.

Finally, the survivor glanced back at him. “I guess,” he said quietly, not really making eye contact.

“But that’s stupid,” said Joey sympathetically, tone quiet and calm, “You can see that, right?”

“…I don’t know. Maybe. …Maybe not,” replied Quentin, still not really looking at him. “…Look, does it really matter?” he added after a second, finally glancing up, “I don’t really want to use it, and I’d rather save it, so why should I have to? What do you care either way?”

Joey started to answer on impulse, and then stopped and actually considered that. “Well, it’s not my business, I guess. It shouldn’t be. Only, it is.”

Quentin gave him a confused look.

“You’re here,” said Joey simply, “And I told you I’d make sure you were safe here until you could leave. So, I’m responsible for that right now. Maybe how you’re doing doesn’t fall under me keeping you safe, but you’re here, and I’m here, and your friend asked me to give you this because she _wanted_ you to have it, and I had to do shit I didn’t want to to her to make it look real in that trial, and it sucked for both of us, so I _do_ have something to do with all this now. People worked for you to get this shit, so you should use it. And anyway, it’s stupid. It’s stupid you don’t want to take it. And that’s not a good reason; stupid’s not a good reason. You don’t want to take it because you think you don’t deserve it for some reason, right? When anybody else would, _anybody_ at all but _you_ on your survivor team, and that’s fucked up. So it’s my business because I’m here, and it’s fucked up, and that means it’s something I make a choice about, and I say take the stupid pill.”

It was _really_ hard to read the look the survivor was giving him, but Joey kept going anyway, because he felt pretty sure about this. And at least the dude didn’t seem to be _angry_ about it or anything.

“Look,” said Joey in a more companionable tone, “Life already fucked you over a lot, right? You got shot, realms changed at just the wrong time, you had to come here, I kicked you when you showed up? Things haven’t _been_ easy. If anything, that should give you like, good energy stored up to spend. You don’t deserve more bad stuff, or no good stuff, when life is bad. That’s when you need good shit the most. Maybe this stuff’s rare, but you need it, right? And this is what it’s for, and it’s okay for you to use it. You’re supposed to.”

He held the items out to within easy reach for Quentin again, and Quentin looked from them to him, but said nothing.

“Look,” continued Joey, doing his best to give him a reassuring kind of smile, “I kind of get the idea you’re the sort of person who is always trying to do all the work for somebody else, and you actually enjoy that, so that’s good and stuff—if it makes you happy to try to carry other people, go for it. I see you do it in trials all the time. But _accepting_ help, and taking it easy, or like, just being not straight up mean to yourself? Doesn’t like, contradict that. At all. Your girl—Claudette, she’s like that too. She wants to help you. You should let her. Anyway, you’re just gonna make everyone else’s life harder in the end if you don’t look out for yourself too, and let other people help. Because then they’ll end up having to do what I’m doing right now, and argue with you for five minutes just to get you to take a pill with a gunshot through your stomach.”

“…Okay,” said Quentin quietly, looking away from him, at the floor, “…Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry to me,” said Joey, intensely relieved and proud of his success, smiling, “You’re mostly giving shit to yourself. And I’m mostly just relieved you’re gonna actually take it. –You are? Gonna take it, right?”

The survivor looked up again at that and took in the look on his face, then smiled back in a way that was very weary, but genuine, and gave a nod. “Yeah.”

He seemed to dislike the decision again as soon as he said that out loud, so in an attempt to distract him from whatever thought path he was about to go on, Joey said, “You want a whole one, or you want it broken in half so it’s less good, but lasts longer?”

That worked, and the survivor refocused on him, considered, and then said, “Uh. …Half, I think? I, uh, I know this isn’t gonna go away in a day,” he added, glancing down at his torso, chagrined.

“You got it,” said Joey, taking out his knife and going to use it against the top of the metal medkit to split the pill.

“Wait!”

Joey paused to look up and saw a pained look on Quentin’s face. He’d sounded almost frantic, and he looked…wrong again suddenly. _What the…?_

“Uh…” Quentin met his gaze for a second and paled, then glanced away. “…I-is there still blood on that? …Just. I…I don’t—I couldn’t really…stomach the…I would like not to end up eating some of one of my friends’ dried blood from when you…” His voice had gotten really quiet by the time he was about finished talking, and he looked _super_ nervous in the one second he stole a glance at Joey’s face, trying to see if that had pissed him off.

Joey felt the wind taken out of his sails. _Right. Don’t know why I would think you listening to me one time meant things were really any…different._ “Sorry,” said Joey, because there _was_ blood from one of the guy’s friends he’d stabbed still on the knife, and as bad as that felt to say right now, it would have felt worse to lie and do what the guy had been repelled enough at the thought of doing that he’d risked making what was to him essentially his ‘captor’ angry. He stowed the knife and dug a pair of scissors out of the medkit instead, and used that. Which worked well enough with a little force.

The survivor took the half pill and the water awkwardly from him with his wrists bound, and Joey thought about offering to help, but decided right now that would be a bad move, and didn’t. Just waited while the survivor awkwardly got the pain medication down on his own.

“…Better?” asked Joey after a second, hopeful about turning the mood in the room around again. And it must have worked at least a tiny bit, because even if it was still in that exhausted, partial, and maybe slightly confused way he’d been doing it pretty much whenever he did, Quentin smiled back at him just a bit.

“It doesn’t work like that. You know it takes pills a minute to kick in,” said Quentin, more statement than question, “Like. Twenty minutes.”

 _Right._ Joey nodded. “The water though?” he asked, trying to recover.

Quentin smiled the same tired way again, but that was pretty good. “Yeah. It was good. Thank you.”

That made everything feel a whole lot better, and Joey smiled back at him in relief. He made eye contact and the guy actually didn’t just look away and avoid it this time. It was nice. … Man, the guy really had the _fucking_ biggest and bluest eyes he’d ever seen. And Joey had seen plenty of blue eyes! Susie had fuckin’ blue eyes, and he saw her face a _lot._ But it wasn’t like this. It _never_ had been. It was almost weird. Like, his eyes were so big and such an _intense_ shade of blue, it almost looked fake—like, like a color you might _draw_ eyes on a cartoon character or something, but not ever see on a real person. White people in books were always getting described as having wildly stupid shit like ‘glowing sea blue orbs’ for eyes, and that had always and still did sound dumb as fuck, but like, he thought maybe he was experiencing the _emotion_ people who wrote that stupid shit _thought_ they were feeling when they wrote that down, looking at this. Also, how the _hell_ were they _that big?_ Like? ??? HOW?

 _You look like a cartoon,_ thought Joey. Quentin tilted his head and gave a kind of confused look back, which must have meant he had some sort of look on his face. _Or you just stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time,_ thought Joey nervously, realizing suddenly that was probably true.

Quickly, he looked away himself and cracked his neck to have something to seem to be doing, then cleared his throat and glanced back. “So, uh. I guess probably the best thing now is for you to go to sleep—since you haven’t.” Quentin looked surprised and a bit worried by that, so Joey hurried to add, “—Don’t worry. I won’t—I don’t think we need to do the whole,” he made a gesture for ‘gag’ because he didn’t want to say it, “thing. I can just wake you up if you start making noise. Uh, anyway, I can stay here and keep watch for you now, so you should probably get some rest. Actually I’m just really impressed and kind of shocked you didn’t fall asleep already while I was gone.”

“…” Quentin thought about saying something and didn’t, gave the wall a long stare, swallowed, then turned back to him again. “I uh. I would actually prefer to stay awake right now.”

“Why?” asked Joey, confused, “You _have_ to be exhausted, right? There’s no way you’re not.”

“No, y-yeah, I— …It’s complicated,” said Quentin nervously, avoiding eye contact again, “I just. I would prefer to wait it out. Besides, we don’t _have_ to sleep in the realm, so I’ll be okay if I don’t.”

“…Well, okay, yeah, we don’t _have_ to,” said Joey, “But. You _do_ heal faster and get energy back faster if you do. And you really need that right now. Plus, we all still feel tired. You’re looking pretty all in, at that, and it’s just gonna get worse.”

“I would still…prefer not to,” said Quentin, looking at the blanket and not him, “I just…I don’t think I would get any rest anyway, and…I just. …”

This was yet another confusing decision from the survivor, but he _did_ seem genuinely super distressed this time, so Joey tried really hard to understand where he might be coming from.

“…Why though?” he prompted honestly, “I don’t understand. You _need_ rest.”

For a long couple of seconds, Quentin stared at the wall, right past him, somewhere very deep in his head, debating through things Joey had no idea of, and then without looking over at all he finally said, “…I would have nightmares.”

 _What? Oh. Like._ “Well, maybe,” said Joey reassuringly, because he got that—nightmares sucked, and the guy had had a _really_ bad one that had been enough to scream out loud from and wake up trying to fight, like, six hours ago or something, “But you can’t _know_ that. And you can’t just not sleep forever. If it looks like you’re having one, I can wake you up, even—I can look out for that, if you want—”

“—No, you don’t understand,” said Quentin, glancing over and then away again, “It.” He exhaled and deflated a little, like he’d given up on something, and then just said very hopelessly, “It’s not like normal nightmares. There’s so much stuff I’ve seen, and been through, and can dream about, and now I’m tied up in here, and I know it’s—fuck I. I-I just. I know that if I go to sleep, I’ll have... …I’ll have…” His voice was choked. “…. It’ll…be _awful_ , and I can’t—I—I just…I’m… I can’t. I can’t have one. I can’t…”

It looked like he meant that painfully. Joey had never seen somebody more afraid of dreaming, but the dread on the survivor’s face was very real, and pained, and serious, and he took it that way too.

“…Please,” said Quentin finally, looking over at him and keeping his gaze there this time, “I. …I don’t want to go to sleep.”

“…But you can’t _know_ you’ll have a nightmare,” tried Joey quietly, petitioning.

“I do,” said Quentin.

“How?” asked Joey.

Quentin didn’t answer. He just looked away and for a second Joey could swear his eyes filled up like he was trying not to cry, but then he looked away and Joey couldn’t be sure anymore.

_What did I…? Shit, did I say something wrong? I was just trying to help—he can’t stay awake forever if he’s going to get better any time soon. It’s not…_

On the couch, Quentin shifted a little, and his eyes settled on the ropes around his wrists, and then he seemed to sense Joey had caught that, and looked over almost scared, eyes big, before turning his gaze away again and fixing it on nothing.

…

Joey stood up.

Quentin sensed the motion and looked over at him nervously, and Joey unsheathed his knife. The survivor went rigid, eyes widening, and then he tried to move back deeper against the couch a little, and there was fear _and_ confusion on his face this time, and somehow that was worse than fear looked on somebody alone.

Joey held up a hand reassuringly. “It’s okay,” he said, tone calming, “I’m not gonna hurt you. Promise. Hold out your arms.”

The survivor hesitated, brow furrowed, and then slowly complied, watching him with concern. Joey took a knee by the couch and caught onto Quentin’s wrists so he could keep them steady with one hand, knife in the other, and looked over at him pointedly. “I’m choosing to trust you here, right? Promise me you’re not gonna stab me in the back and make me regret this.”

Quentin got it, or thought he had, and Joey watched surprise and then something much deeper that was hard to place even though Joey had seen it a lot the last few hours now flicker across his face. He gave a nod. “You’re…the only thing my whole life that’s ever had the chance to really hurt me, and chosen to try and help me instead. …Why on earth would I want to repay that by hurting you?”

Joey tried really hard to keep his expression serious and not smile, but his chest felt warm and his pulse sped up at the words. “Okay then,” he said, “Just hold still.” Quentin did, and Joey carefully sliced through the ropes around his wrists, then stood back up and went to go sit down in the chair again, watching in his periphery as the survivor stared down at his freed arms and gently ran fingers along the ligature marks left behind from tearing at the ropes.

When Joey sat back down, the survivor looked up at him, and he had that look on his face again Joey wished he knew the name to. Like being moved. Maybe was all it was. It felt like it must have a more specific, more personal name than that, but maybe not. Or maybe there just _wasn’t_ a name for it. Either way, it was a good expression.

“Thank you,” said Quentin. And Joey could see he really meant that.

He gave a nod. “Just. Remember what you promised, and don’t make me regret doing that.”

“I won’t,” said Quentin, “I promise. Honestly, even if I _wanted_ to try and attack one of you, I uh, don’t exactly think I’d have the strength for that right now.” He smiled, and Joey realized he was trying to make a joke. “A stiff breeze could probably take me out.”

Joey grinned, and tilted his head in acknowledgement. “Yeah, maybe.”

For a moment, they were both quiet, and it was almost a comfortable silence.

“Can I…move? Am I allowed to like, try to get up?” asked Quentin awkwardly then, shifting a little, and doing it much easier with the use of his arms again, though still grimacing at how it hurt him.

“Sure,” said Joey, confused, and then, following Quentin’s gaze to his legs still under the blankets, “-Oooh. You, uh…mean.”

It seemed stupid, because with his hands free the guy could probably untie his ankles on his own with enough time alone anyway, but Joey didn’t want to do it. He was still deeply afraid under all this that any survivor, no matter how they were acting right now, would _jump_ at the chance to try and kill any of the killers—hunters. Fuck, whatever they were. Didn’t matter. Either way, he just…

 _Shit._ Quentin was watching him carefully, and Joey thought maybe seeing a little too much. There was an almost sympathetic look on his face. _Why would that be how you feel about it, though? Why aren’t you annoyed?_

“Too much too fast?” suggested Quentin as if answering his own question more than asking one, “And you don’t really trust me yet either.” He moved to sit up more comfortably against the couch arm and pillows, but didn’t look at his legs again. “That’s okay. Maybe later. Just…thank you. For.” He glanced down at his wrists and turned them a little. The ligature marks weren’t _awful,_ but they were a lot more deep and painful looking than Joey had thought at first, or expected, and it made him feel guilty. He hadn’t tried to tie them that tight. Hadn’t been _trying_ to hurt him. When he tied him up he’d been specifically trying _not_ to hurt him. And now he was wondering if the ankles looked the same... “My hands,” finished Quentin, “This is a lot less painful. I really do promise I’m not gonna try anything. Why would I? There’s four of you and I’d get my ass kicked; you’re helping me; and it’s not like I have anywhere to run away _to._ Or _need_ to escape.”

That was all true, and it made Joey feel a lot more at ease about his decision. So did the fact that Quentin seemed happy with him again.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” said Joey after a second of thought, standing up again and unsheathing the knife.

“Wait, really?” asked Quentin, surprised.

“You always wear that necklace, right?” said Joey, pausing by the foot of the couch to gesture to it with the knife, “So you’re pretty religious.”

Quentin looked incredibly taken aback for a second, but Joey could also see in his expression that he was right, and the guy anxiously dipped his head in a tiny nod.

“On God, then. Swear to me you won’t attack any of us while you’re here, or steal our stuff, or like, break it or try to sabotage us some way, and I’ll call that good,” said Joey.

“…On God,” echoed Quentin seriously after a second, giving another little slow nod, “I swear.”

Joey smiled at him. “Okay. I’m gonna choose to believe you then, but if you break your word, I’m gonna make you regret it. And even if you just like, steal something, you’re staying tied up the _whole_ rest of the time you’re here. And tied to the couch. You get me?”

Quentin nodded gravely. Joey moved back the blankets and sliced through the ropes there, careful not to nick an ankle, and then let the blankets drop.

When he straightened up, Quentin was smiling at him, and even if it was just a little smile, it felt great. There was none of the disgust and anger from earlier, or fear right now, just appreciation.

“Thank you,” said Quentin again.

Joey gave a nod, happy, and then remembered and dug in his pocket and pulled out the apple from earlier and held it out. Surprised, Quentin blinked at it, then looked up at him in confusion.

“For you. I snagged it during the last trial—Plagues’ place has trees,” said Joey, very proud of himself, “Figured you could use some energy, and we don’t really have a lot else to offer. Hope it’s good.”

Quentin blinked at him again, then gingerly took the apple and looked it over with almost wonder before glancing back at him. “You sure? You don’t want it?”

Joey tried not to snort. “I’m not the one who should be in a hospital. Go ahead, if you want it.” He really hoped he wanted it.

Hesitantly, Quentin looked over the apple again, then up at Joey, then bit into it. He looked surprised, which was kind of a worrying reaction from someone biting into fruit, but he chewed the mouthful and swallowed it.

“What? Is it not good?” asked Joey nervously. Sure, most apples weren’t yellow, but some were, and he had been pretty sure the ones he’d picked had been ripe.

“No,” said Quentin quickly, reassuring, “Not that—I just wasn’t expecting it to be…sour _and_ sweet—tart.”

“Is that bad?” asked Joey worriedly.

“No-no, not at all,” hurried Quentin, holding it out to him, “Here, you can cut a slice if you want. It’s just not what I expected. My dad always got sweeter ones like Ambrosia or Pink Ladies, unless he was going to bake a pie. This is more sour, but not in a bad way. It’s actually really good.”

Relieved, Joey waved the offer back. “Nah, it’s for you. You keep it. I just haven’t actually tried the Plagues’ apples before, so I was worried they might be bad or something.”

“Well, my official vote is that you should give them a try some time,” said Quentin, smiling at him and taking another bite, swallowing, and then adding, “And that they’d probably taste really good in a pie. Thank you, for this.”

“Welcome,” said Joey, letting himself smile back for real this time. He didn’t know why he’d been so anxious suddenly about doing it.

He went to sit back down while Quentin ate the apple, and then waited, watching. Free to actually move around, Quentin had shakily pushed himself up to sit against the couch back, leaning into the pillows with his knees tucked in a bit, and he looked a _whole_ lot more at ease and comfortable. He was going through the apple slow, but he did seem to be enjoying it, and that felt extremely gratifying. Joey was really glad he’d decided to do this—all of it, not just the apple. Maybe he wasn’t being as careful as he should have been, but the guy _had_ promised, and sure he’d been making a joke earlier, but honestly, the guy _was_ half-dead. A stiff breeze really might be able to take him down right now. And even Susie was tougher than he gave her credit for. Until he healed up, Quentin wasn’t going to be able to really hurt anybody. And probably more importantly, Joey just didn’t really think he would try.

He’d sort of expected the survivors to be a _lot_ more vengeful than they were—maybe because he felt kind of like if positions had been reversed, he would have been, but Quentin and Claudette and the other girl who he’d let go didn’t seem like that. They might be the odd men out though. The Susies of their group, as it were. There _were_ a lot of survivors, and Joey had only had kind of weirdly positive interactions with like, two and a half. And some of that might just be fear that pissing him off would get Quentin hurt in their place. Not…whatever made Quentin like he was.

It was like…hmm. Some people seemed like if someone had killed their loved one, and they wanted to kill the culprit, but then the person they were hunting saved their life by pulling them out of the way of an oncoming car, they would go, “Well I appreciated that, but also, you _did_ kill my best friend, and this is was too little too late, so fuck you,” and would still shoot their target. And some people seemed like they would get pulled out of the way of the car and go, “Well, this doesn’t change things between us, and I’m still going to try to kill you for what you did, but this once, in thanks, I’m gonna let you go, because of what you did,” and wouldn’t take the shot just this one time. And Joey personally kind of got both rationales, but Quentin was _definitely_ somebody who’d do the latter. And that made him a lot less nervous about leaving him free to walk around.

Sure, anybody with sense would at _least_ try to steal a weapon, but he was kind of thinking Quentin was a pretty extreme case of ‘We’re enemies still, but I won’t return a good deed immediately with a bad one,’ and wouldn’t. Because it wouldn’t be honorable, not to do it _right now._ Caught too much in the immediate scheme of things for him to remember the bigger one the same way.

Which was funny, but Joey really liked it. Honestly, he wasn’t super sure which kind of person he was himself. Hadn’t been in that position. But he liked the way Quentin seemed to decide things.

Opposite him, Quentin finished the apple, and picked up the half empty cup of water and nursed it. It was still kind of awkward, ‘hanging out’ like this, or, being in a small space with a survivor at all, and he could tell it felt that way to Quentin too, but it was a lot less tense than it had been before.

 _I think I did pretty good,_ thought Joey proudly, trying to watch the survivor without being _super_ obvious or like just _staring_ at him. He looked so much more at ease and comfortable, scrunched up on the couch drinking water quietly. And he’d thanked him something like five times too.

“So, do you think you can go to sleep now?” asked Joey when he finally finished the water.

Quentin looked up in surprise.

“Since you’re not tied up anymore,” explained Joey.

The guy furrowed his brow and looked lost for a second, trying to figure that out. _Shit, wait, was that not what he meant? When he said he was sure he’d have nightmares because…?_

“I mean, it helps, right?” asked Joey nervously.

“Yeah, I-I’m sure it would,” said Quentin unconvincingly, “I just. Uh. I’m pretty awake right now.”

“You’re not tired?” asked Joey, giving the deep bags of exhaustion under the guy’s eyes and obvious weariness coating his skin like a film a disbelieving once-over.

The guy looked at him, then glanced uncomfortably away. “I’m tired, but. …” He looked like he was going to keep going and start a sentence beginning with ‘I’, but he stopped, and just went quiet.

Joey watched him carefully for a second and tilted his head. “…Do you not feel safe?” he asked finally, pretty worried and sure that this was going to be it, and not wanting to know, but asking anyway. “Still? Because of me? Being here?”

Quentin looked back up at him immediately, eyes big, and started to say something, reconsidered, and then said, “No. I…”

 _No? Really?_ That was a _huge_ relief…if he was telling the truth. Super fucking confusing though, because he had no idea what else it could be. _Maybe he’s lying, and he’s just afraid saying yes would make me yell at him like I did last night again…_

Agitated now, Quentin glanced over and saw him waiting for an answer and started to drum his fingers against his leg. “I’m.” He stopped and swallowed, thought, and then sighed. “Look, can we maybe just…talk instead?”

Joey tilted his head. “Talk?”

“—Look, please; I don’t really want to…explain right now, but,” cut in Quentin desperately, “…Just. Please?”

The guy looked so intent and despairing about this, it was hard to want to keep pushing. Even with no idea why this was such a big thing to him. _…Maybe he is scared, and he wants to talk to get to know you more—feel better. I mean, you felt better about untying him after you figured him out a little more. I guess it can’t hurt, right? He’s gotta get tired and pass out eventually anyway. _And besides, he looked downright pitiful. Huge eyes so worried, and some of his curls still matted against his scalp with sweat, pale from blood loss, and face ashy and drawn. Some of the white bandages wrapped around his whole chest and his arm already a little pink from seeped-through bleeding, the painful looking bruises that continued past them and appeared along other parts of his torso and arms as well and were turning deep purples and blues. Plus the ligature marks around his wrists Joey knew _he_ had put there, and kept trying not to think about.

“Yeah, okay,” gave in Joey.

The survivor looked intensely relieved and a bit surprised, and then happy, and he smiled at him a little. “Thanks.”

Another one. He’d gotten a lot of those in the last half hour now. It still felt weird. Good, but weird, to hear that at all from a survivor. Or…anyone, now…

“Oh—uh—” said Joey, remembering as he glanced down to avoid eye contact for a second and happened to catch the items in his periphery, “If you’re staying up, you want these back?” He held up the shirt and jacket he’d removed originally to stitch wounds.

“Yeah, please,” said Quentin, reaching out carefully for them.

 _He’s afraid to touch me,_ thought Joey, a pang in his chest. Watching him move hesitantly and slowly when he had to get close, like someone trying to appease a snarling dog they were afraid of being bitten by. He guessed he got that, but he didn’t want to. The guy could seem so normal and talk to him like they were just two people, but of course that wasn’t really going to change the fact that…all the shit that had ever happened between them had happened. He wondered if the survivor would _ever_ believe he didn’t want to hurt him. _…Probably if he does at all, it’ll be just in time for me to be starting again,_ thought Joey morosely.

“Here,” said Joey, giving him the clothes. Quentin took them slowly and then looked down at the fairly large hole through the center of each, and grimaced a little. He looked so tired. _Life really likes to just knock you back down the second you even think about getting on your feet, huh?_ “You could probably sew that.”

Quentin looked up at him in surprise.

“We’ve got cloth,” offered Joey, “And you’ve got the needle and thread already. Heck I’m pretty sure we’ve gotta have some kind of grey and blue at least close to that.”

For a moment, the survivor forgot to talk, and then he stammered out, “R-really?”

Joey nodded and stood up. “Here, I’ll go look.”

“Are you sure?” asked Quentin, still looking kind of confused and taken aback.

“Yeah,” said Joey with a shrug, “It’ll just take me a second.”

Quentin started to say something and stopped, and just looked down at the fabric in his hands and ran his thumb along it, and Joey decided to give him a little space to think whatever was in his head through, and slipped out to go dig through boxes downstairs. It didn’t take long to find what he needed, since almost fucking _every_ blanket or curtain in the damn place had been some shade of black, white, grey, or blue. There wasn’t any navy, just a black-grey that was kind of close, but there was a good grey that had been a window curtain at some point, and Joey sliced off decent chunks of both with his knife and brought them back up to the room. When he got there, Quentin had taken scissors and some thread and a needle from one of the medkits already, and was absently tapping the needlepoint along the back of one of his hands and staring into space. He jolted a little when Joey stepped in, and refocused immediately.

“Here,” said Joey, handing him the fabric, “This is about as close as we can get. Will it work okay?”

Quentin took it, a far-away and kind of overwhelmed look on his face. He ran his fingers along the cloth, testing the material, and then looked up at Joey. There was still some of that almost glassy, zoned-out quality Joey wasn’t sure if was exhaustion, or being just plain out of it from all the shit that had happened to him, or both, but when he spoke, he sounded grateful. “It’ll work great. Thank you.”

Proud of himself, Joey smiled at him and sat back down.

A little uneasy being watched, the survivor fidgeted with his supplies and tried to find a comfortable way to sit, winced when moving hurt him and gave up, then finally just pushed through and started to cut the fabric into sizes that would work for his patches. Very aware Joey was watching him, and trying _really_ hard not to look up.

“Soooo. What did you want to talk about?” asked Joey.

Quentin glanced up instinctively, then back down and tried to keep his gaze fixed on his work. “Uh. Anything, I guess.”

“Anything?” considered Joey. _Okay, come on, you can do this. Just don’t pick something that’ll freak him out. You’re really shit at that, so think it over this time first. Okay. What’s a safe question; what’s a safe question…_ “…You like music?”

“Sure,” said Quentin carefully, “Who doesn’t?”

“What kind?” asked Joey.

Quentin shrugged, eyes still on his torn shirt. He was moving really slow, like he was afraid Joey might interpret something too quick as a sign of hostility. Body language all locked up and tense and compact. “Uhhhh. I like a lot of post-punk stuff. _The Clash, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen_—”

“—Oh really?” asked Joey excitedly, and Quentin glanced over in surprise. “I-I really like all of those,” said Joey, face heating up and second-guessing himself immediately, “I mean, I—I know some songs from all of those. A-and people don’t usually say _Echo & the Bunnymen_. But _The Killing Moon_ ’s one of my favorite songs, actually. I mean, usually I like stuff that goes a little harder, but it just kind of has a good hook.”

“Yeah, no, I. Know what you mean,” said Quentin, surprised, but then smiling a little, “I like that one too. It’s not the most complicated, but it’s not because it’s a song that doesn’t feel like it has to be. It’s got almost like a dignity to it? Like it knows exactly what it is and where it’s going, and it’s accepted that.”

“Which sort of makes the whole fated thing work really well,” agreed Joey, “With the lyrics.”

Quentin considered him for a second, patch job forgotten. “…Did you listen to any more of _Ocean Rain_?”

“I actually bought the tape,” said Joey a little self-consciously.

“You bought it as a cassette?” asked Quentin, brow furrowing.

“Yeah, I mean. I know some people collect vinyls, but I didn’t have a player,” said Joey, flushing.

“Huh,” said Quentin, like this was strange information, “Well, what did you think of it?”

“Uh, pretty solid,” said Joey, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it. But _Silver_ opens strong as like, a pretty upbeat and enjoyable album, and _Ocean Rain_ felt like a good close.”

Quentin nodded, and glanced away suddenly to refocus intently on his patching. His face was a little red for some reason. “That’s…I usually don’t hear people say they’ve even listened to them. Have you heard any of their other albums?”

“I have, yeah. That’s the only one I bought, but I got a couple other songs on mix tapes and stuff,” said Joey, relaxing a bit in the chair.

“Have you heard _Nothing Lasts Forever_?” asked Quentin hopefully, risking a quick glance. He’d been _super_ hesitant to willingly interact at all with Joey until the second he’d said he liked the same music, and now he was like, fighting to keep the tide back, and it was kind of super endearing. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“I don’t think so,” said Joey, who considered lying for a second to keep the good times going, but figured he’d get caught, “Which album is that on?”

“ _Evergreen,_ ” said Quentin.

Joey furrowed his brow. “’ _Evergreen’_? I don’t remember that one. Was it one of their old ones, or super new?”

“Uh, neither. It’s one of the older albums, kind of, but it’s newer than _Ocean Rain,_ ” said Quentin, “I think it was…1990….” He exhaled through his teeth. “… _seven?_ ”

Joey stared at him, and then laughed. “What?”

“What?” echoed Quentin, confused.

“You said 1997,” said Joey, “Not 1987.”

“…Yeah, uh, _Echo & The Bunnymen _was their 1987 release, I’m pretty sure,” said Quentin, and then something seemed to hit him and he looked back up at Joey, eyes wider. Then he stared past him at nothing. "Uhm," Quentin offered very quietly after a second, "Did you hear anything off _What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?_ or _Flowers_ or _Siberia_ or _The Fountain_ either?”

 _What? Are those…_ Damn, and Joey had thought he’d heard a decent bit of _Echo & The Bunnymen _too. “Are you sure those are all _Echo & The Bunnymen_?” asked Joey.

Some of the color drained out of Quentin’s face, and his expression changed in flashes; fear, and then refusal, dread, realization, and hurt and hopelessness, and then his expression closed off and just got quiet and pained, and his complexion got ashy.

“What?” asked Joey, totally lost as to what he could possibly have done wrong this time, “Are you okay? What just happened?”

Quentin cleared his throat and glanced at his face for a second, then wouldn’t look at him at all. Fixed his eyes on the cloth in his lap and kept them there. “Uh,” his voice was too strained and he had to clear his throat and try again, “Did you ever know a guy named Jeff Johansen?”

Joey stared at him. _How the fuck did he…? _

“Uh…Yeah, actually,” said Joey, taken aback, “I…went to school with a guy named Jeff Johansen. Sat behind him in chem. Do you…know him? I thought you were from Ohio?”

Quentin didn’t say anything, but he shut his eyes for a second, and he looked miserable.

_I don’t understand, what’s going on? What did I do wrong?_

Joey was incredibly distressed about whatever was happening, but he had _no_ idea at all what to do.

“Uhhh,” managed Quentin finally, more exhale than anything, voice strained.

“What’s wrong?” asked Joey worriedly, sitting up again and watching for some decipherable sign from the survivor anxiously.

Quentin cleared his throat but kept his gaze solidly on the fabric in his lap. “It’s complicated?” he offered with effort after a second, struggling, “I’ll tell you, but. I need. I need a little time to think of the right way to explain. Is that okay?”

“Explain what?” said Joey worriedly.

Quentin took a second to answer, but then he exhaled slowly and finally looked up and met his gaze. “I’m sorry. I know that was a…really weird response to have to a conversation about rock albums. It’s…not like it probably seems.” He almost came across as sorry, which was deeply unsettling, but he was trying to smile again, and that was something. “I do kind of know him. Don’t worry though, he’s—he’s not dead or anything,” he added quickly, seeing the look that must have come over Joey’s face. “It’s complicated. I’d tell you now if I knew how to, but I don’t. Is it okay if I…think about how to explain it for a little first?”

“Uhhh,” said Joey, still very concerned and unnerved by all this.

“I promise, it won’t get any worse by waiting,” said Quentin, calming down a little himself, “And I guess I…really _shouldn’t_ have been as surprised as I was. Just. That kind of thing always catches me off guard.”

“What kind of thing?” said Joey, searching.

Quentin held his gaze in silence for a second and then shrugged hopelessly. “Cruel fate, I guess.”

_Cruel fate?_

“Look—I was really enjoying talking about music. And I feel like shit, and I would really like to go back to that,” said Quentin hesitantly after a second, just a bit pleading, “I promise I’ll explain all this. But could we go back to that for a while first? Please?”

… Joey considered that. He _wanted_ to know, but he also wanted not to freak this guy out again, and things had been getting a little better before that. And he’d promised, so. So, maybe whatever it was, it would be better to wait, like he’d asked. Maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as it had felt like. And Joey decided to trust him.

“Okay,” said Joey, making himself relax back in the chair a little. Trying to make himself not think about whatever the fuck had just happened, trying not to wonder.

For a long couple of agonizing seconds, they were both quiet, struggling to find a place to pick back up, neither looking at the other.

“…Uh,” Quentin tried finally, glancing over, “So. You said you went to school with Jeff? What was he like?”

“Jeff?” echoed Joey, surprised, “Uh, nice, I guess. I didn’t know him super well. But he kicked _ass_ at impact sports, and he was _really_ fucking good at chemistry. I used to cheat off him. He was in shop with me too, but he was really _bad_ at that. Worked at the video store. OH!” he added excitedly, leaning forward, “He does art stuff too—he’s actually the guy who did our mural! That big like, Hard Rock looking ‘Legion’ up on the wall here?”

Quentin nodded.

“Pretty sick, right?” said Joey.

Quentin watched him for a second, and then almost like it was sad and he was working hard not to make it that way said, “Yeah, it is.”

“Frank paid him for that,” said Joey, confused by that response, and choosing to just keep the story going because he didn’t know how to react to it, “And he did a really good job.”

“Frank paid—‘Frank’?” echoed Quentin, brow furrowing almost like he couldn’t _believe_ it, “Wait. So. You two, you’re really Frank and Joe?”

“Uhhh, like, nobody but Frank _ever_ calls me Joe, and please don’t, but technically—well, technically it’s ‘Joseph,’” said Joey, grimacing, “But _please_ never call me that one. That’s way worse.”

Quentin smiled and exhaled in a way that had almost been a laugh. “I won’t then.” The smile faded. “He paid Jeff for that?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, confused again by this reaction, “I mean. It was a pretty decent project, so.”

“…Yeah, no, it is,” agreed Quentin, shaking himself. He picked up the needle and thread and started to sew on the patch he’d trimmed. “I’m…sure Jeff would be really glad you guys thought so highly of it.”

“I hope so,” said Joey, “He was pretty cool.”

Quentin didn’t say anything.

“Big, quiet guy,” said Joey to have something to fill the silence, “I think people were a little scared of him mostly—which can be good! Means people won’t try to fuck with you in school. But he wasn’t actually a scary guy at all. I got some of the best movie recs I’ve ever had from him. And one time in gym, somebody tried to give me shit over nothing, and Jeff just came up and glared them down until they backed off.” Joey thought about that for a second, digging for other memories. “…Kind of a shame I never really got to know him before… _here_ happened to me, I guess.”

“…Yeah,” said Quentin quietly.

There had been something off about his voice, and when Joey looked over, he thought his eyes looked too shiny in the dim light.

“He’d be glad to hear that, though,” added Quentin after a second, smiling to himself in a way that was almost painful to see, “I think he’d like that a lot.”

“You said he’s not dead, right?” asked Joey anxiously, because this was really starting to freak him out.

“Yeah. Yeah,” said Quentin, trying to snap himself out of whatever was going on with him. He glanced over at Joey and tried to smile. “You know, I thought before maybe you’ve been getting all my luck, but I was wrong. You’re just a different kind of unlucky.” Joey blinked at him. “No wonder we both like that song.”

“ _The Killing Moon_?” asked Joey, confused.

Quentin nodded.

“… _How_ long are you gonna wait to explain this?” asked Joey.

Quentin laughed, just a little, sudden laugh, but it felt good to hear, and when he smiled at him, Joey smiled back.

“Not long, I promise,” said Quentin, “And uh…In the meantime, you said he gave you some good movie recs?”

Joey nodded.

“Such as?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic itself, New Dawn Fades, is named after the 1979 Joy Division song New Dawn Fades. I picked it because music resonates deeply with me when it comes to storytelling, and because it's also important to Quentin, and to Joey, and a way both of them figure out the world too (like so many of us, it's a thing music is really good for). I also wanted to pick a track from his favorite band, or one of them, and this one was very fitting for his character arc in New Dawn Fades as a whole. I've known ever since starting that I needed to find a song for Joey's side of it too, and a few nights ago finally found that in The Killing Moon, which I heard once and knew instantly was exactly what I'd been looking for. It both fits Joey's interests and timing well, and is by another of Quentin's favorite bands, which are big bonuses, but mostly, it just perfectly fits both the tone and content of Joey's arc for New Dawn Fades. So I finally have my companion piece! I thoroughly recommend it as a song--it's just, really good. It was the top song from Echo & The Bunnymen's 1984 album Ocean Rain, and its grimly fated but resolved to the fact it's going to have to face that, amidst pockets or regret and distress and a kind of dignified sadness, fit Joey really well. Just as New Dawn Fades' quiet, tireless slow bass riff and brief bits of passion and despair and hope fit Quentin and his arc respectively. While both songs, lyrically, fit both characters, and their stories are inherently tied together, as far as point of view is concerned, New Dawn Fades is very much Quentin's, and The Killing Moon very much Joey's companion to it.   
> If you'd like to hear either song, they're easy to find individually on youtube or spotify, as well as both on the playlist I made and have linked to in last chapter (though the Echo & the Bunnymen tracks are new additions).
> 
> Legion knew Jeff in school, to them a year or two ago, to Jeff, over twenty years ago. While it's possible, with things like Jane showing up in the realm, Jeff would put two-and-two together, and realize who Legion was in turn, I honestly don't think he would. At least not anything like fast. Because Jeff is the kind of person who really believes in others, and it just wouldn't click to him his old casual friends would be the kind of people capable of doing things The Legion has done to him. It's...really messed up, for all of them. Sad for Jeff to go to Ormond and see his work up on the wall, much worse when he inevitably realizes the group of friends who gave him his first ever art commission in his life and were passing buddies he has goof memories of and moments of kindness stored from have all four ripped open his guts and killed him mercilessly too many times to count. It would be a devastating thing for anyone to have to realize. As I'm sure would be finding out the world has gone on, and while you've only been away for 2 years, the world around you has gone past twenty, and loved ones are older, are maybe dead. Things have changed, and you don't belong in it anymore--it's not the world you know. The Entity truly does like being cruel. According to Jeff's paragraph, what got him kidnapped by it originally was a moment of nostalgia. His father died, he returned to Ormond at about 40 to mourn him, picked up the guitar he'd been left, and went to see the first art anyone ever paid him for. And running his hand along old words he threw up on a wall, the Entity took him. It really is unendingly cruel.  
> While Echo & the Bunnymen began their work in the late 70s, and are easily old enough for Joey to have known, they have continued to make albums, including two--one of new work, one of reworks of earlier songs--which Quentin himself vanished too early to hear: Meteorites (2014), and The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon (2018). 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone reading! I hope you enjoy. There's going to be several good chunks of character chapters for a bit, but we all know things can't stay okay for very long and trust me, they won't. In the meantime though, please enjoy some lighter stuff, and thank you so much to everyone reading, and an extra big thank you to the people leaving comments who fill my heart with love and joy. And the person who gave me an extremely generous gift too. You're the best. Honestly, I wish I knew better how to thank you. <3


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